


The Age of Oddities Series. Short: The Six Wellingtons

by grassle



Series: The Age of Oddities [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternative Universe - Regency, Crack Treated Seriously, M/M, Mystery, Regency
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-17
Updated: 2017-01-21
Packaged: 2018-08-09 09:18:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 36,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7796134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grassle/pseuds/grassle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Extra bit in the Regency AU version of S1: A Study in Pinks, The Beaux's Banker and The Glorious Game.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Archea2 and Lauramac_10 like the idea of Regency Sherlock, all skin-tight breeches and flowing white shirt. I like the idea of Sherlock and Lestrade, only with added Regency. And spanking.  
> Just don’t get the arse about historical, geographical, cultural, socio-economic or procedural inaccuracies. Seriously. Don’t.
> 
> “This is the age of oddities let loose.”
> 
> George Gordon, Lord Byron, _Don Juan_

Aaaaahhhh yeesssss. This was the life. At lovely rest, nicely warm and very cosy, Lestrade needed only one thing. He was too warm and at ease to even slosh out an arm for it though. And wasn’t it empty? No matter – he had a personal servant. A body servant, one might say, here to do his bidding among the lavender-scented clouds of steam.

“More brandy, love.” He indicated with his eyes the glass all forlorn on the floor to his right. “You can stop that for now.”

“Oh I can, can I?” 

Lestrade caught the mutter, as he was no doubt meant to. He closed his eyes too late against the splash as Sherlock tossed the washcloth back into the water and scooped for the brandy balloon. His gaze flicked from its empty shine to the unrepentant Lestrade, reclining at his ease in the still-steaming, still-scented tub. Lestrade flicked his gaze in answer to the bottle warming even nearer to the roaring hearth than he was. Sherlock rolled his eyes, then obliged, holding out the refilled crystal after to the lounging Lestrade.

Lestrade indicated his predicament: poised just so for maximum submergment of his body in the washtub, his head positioned just right, resting on the folded towel on its back, one hand helping support that and the other free to, well, see to his needs. How could he move? Even to drink? He waited for Sherlock to kneel and lean, holding the glass at Lestrade’s lips, then tipping it as Lestrade swallowed. Lovely. Lestrade nodded, and Sherlock got up to retake his place at the tub’s foot.

“One second.” Lestrade ran his gaze slowly over Sherlock from chest to midcalf. It was time.

“Again?” It sounded more incredulous than peeved.

“Oooh ahh,” Lestrade replied, his dragged-from-the-depths West Country affirmation drying in his throat as Sherlock obeyed the command and…wet himself down.

“Not too much,” Sherlock said in a gravelly Somerset burr – oh; him, was it? Little parrot. Worse than the real article, Old Bailey, down at Bow Street – before Lestrade could utter the commandment himself.

“Issun. J’st a splashdab,” Lestrade whispered, the water seemingly having taken him back to the sea of his childhood and its language. No; not too much. Just enough to dampen that loose white Cambric shirt. That shirt, whose Belgian lace cuffs had been turned back all evening to reveal those lovely forearms and wrists. That shirt, its ruffle front unlaced, left free and loose, for the frills to torment Lestrade, scratching a teasing caress over his skin when Sherlock bent over to minister to him in his bath. Yes; that shirt, now bathwater-wet enough to cling to Sherlock’s chest and reveal it, statue-perfect, in the candlelight. No; better than any statue, the marble made real by Sherlock’s dark pink nipples, protruding, proudly, Lestrade could fancy, for his viewing pleasure. Be for a different sort of pleasure, before the night was finished, he promised himself. Promised them.

“Enough?” came a rumbled smoky-dark query, Sherlock smoothing damp hands down his hips under Lestrade’s heated gaze. Lestrade could just about nod. It wouldn’t have been, had Sherlock been wearing his underdrawers, all white and loose to match his chemisette. They’d need the water treatment too, to reveal the beauty underneath, because they dried quickly and easily in the fire’s warmth. But tonight his lambling had dressed for Lestrade, and Sherlock’s sin-tight – and yes; that was what Lestrade meant – suede buckskin breeches still held the first coat of water they’d been subjected to, and so the skin-coloured leather was even more close-fitting than usual, enticing more gazes than usual to those gorgeous legs they shaped.

“Your fault,” Lestrade managed, feasting his eyes. Sherlock had admitted to soaking the suede fabric to make it shrink to fit. Lestrade had run with the idea and taken it to a more, well, if not logical then lovely, end. “Now, where were we?”

“Here,” Sherlock breathed in resignation, resuming his place on the small footstool at the tub’s end. “With me –”

“On the right side of the washcloth for once.” Lestrade’s sigh was one of pleasure, of contentment as he propped his foot on the rim of the bath for Sherlock to attend to. “About at the knee, you were.” Considerate, kind, he raised his leg aloft to make Sherlock’s task easier. His stolid, workaday leg, its bulk and muscles and sinews hewn by his life of work, making it much less shapely and refined than His Viscountship’s. Not that Sherlock ever voiced any criticism. Of any part of Lestrade’s body. Considering that, Lestrade settled back into the lapping of the warm, scented depths.

“Hmm.” Sherlock returned to his flannel and soap duties, head dutifully bent, eyes down on his task, but his eyes peeping up through his tousle of fringe, darting quicksilver dabs of glances at his master. At Lestrade. More particularly at Lestrade’s using his free hand to lazily stroke and tug at himself, the motions, all be they unhurried and soft, causing little wavelets to ripple an aural accompaniment to Lestrade’s long, leisurely play at his cockstand.

“Don’t ’ee fret. I’ll not spend in the water,” Lestrade assured Sherlock with a dirty chuckle. “Won’t be spending for a while. I’m enjoying this too much.”

“Being bathed and cosseted, long overdue, after all I’ve put you through over the years?” Sherlock asked, his tone sly, and Lestrade laughed, recognising a play on his own once-words.

“Surprised you remember that!” Much more momentous things had transpired that evening.

“I remember everything about –” And the lordly one stopped, embarrassed.

“Well I do about you,” Lestrade assured him. “And I wish this bath was big enough for two.” God, he’d love that, sharing this element with Sherlock, wet and warm and cossetted together, their touches made slippery and tight-loose by the water. Him sitting up, still covered and caressed by the warm water, Sherlock half sitting, half lying in his lap, those long, lithe limbs stretched out on top of him, plastered to him, stirring him to urgent, throbbing life, urging him to reach out and stroke, soft and sweet to start, then tight and hard when they couldn’t wait more, their passion chopping the water into eddies and waves. He sighed. Impossible here. Or in any bath he’d ever seen. Well, except one.

“I remember,” Sherlock murmured, pulling Lestrade’s gaze to him. He was a dab hand at the mindreading. Or maybe Lestrade was just that obvious.

“Maybe one day. In the summer…” They’d been invited back. “Funny. Not usually the case,” he said, confident his sweetling could divine that thought too. “Bathing the other, gently soothing away the weariness of a long day. Oh, something Dr Watson said.”

“You mean, something the doctor ordered,” Sherlock corrected, his lips curving into a smile. 

But Lestrade’s chuckle seized in his throat as Sherlock’s hand neared his. Washcloth abandoned, those long, slim fingers crept to his, ghosting over them before Sherlock’s thumb swiped over the tip of Lestrade’s swollen cock as it emerged from the circle of Lestrade’s fist. Then Sherlock stopped.

“What was that?” he queried, head on one side.

“Should think you’d know by now,” Lestrade answered, miffed at the withdrawal of that promise.

“No, a noise?”

“Can’t be. There’s no one else in the house. It’s all quiet.” Lestrade splashed his legs in the water, as if that would illustrate, or convince. “Mrs Hudson’s at her crony’s, Molly and Billy are off out, John’s at a meeting with his publisher…” He closed his eyes at his own stupidity in mentioning that. “There’s no one else about and the place is locked up, so no one can or would –”

“I say! Cuzes! Sherllers, ’Spector!” came from the closed window, along with a hard wooden thump. “All the doors and downstairs windows are locked! I had to get this –”

“Ladder! Piers –” Words failed Lestrade, as they so often did, and not only him, when dealing with Sherlock’s hapless, buck-toothed, confused-eyed cousin. “No! Don’t you dare!” He sprang from the tub, as wet as a wave, to grab Sherlock’s hand before Sherlock could dash to the casement and fling the window open wide, dislodging his unwanted relative. Dispatching, more likely.

“Lawks, I’ve the very ripest plum of gossip to share!” came the cry from the window.

“You want-wit!” yelled Sherlock, turning to stare at the gangling redhead. “Do you have this house confused with your idiotic St James’s club? Because we’re not your hog-faced and bacon-brained drinking companions! We don’t care one wit about Lord Nincompoop having visited a Mine Aunt’s to service his needs and falling victim to the curse of Venus as a result!”

“Oh! Thunder and turf! Has he?” Piers cheeped, open-mouthed, releasing a hand from the wooden bar of the ladder to scratch his confused head. “La, this window’s shut too. Oh!” He caught sight of Lestrade and removed his other hand to wave. Lestrade closed his eyes. It didn’t make Piers vanish. Piers pointed at Lestrade. “Is it because it’s bath night?” He nodded as if enlightened. 

“How would – ” Lestrade started to demand an explanation, a link, a gleam of sense between Piers’s words, and the fortress-like nature of the Baker Street house.

“Leave it,” demanded Sherlock through gritted teeth. “And do you have to insist on displaying yourself to my family in all your glory?”

“That’s not all my glory, love.” Lestrade regarded his somewhat deflated state. “Not with all this Peeping Tommery going on.”

“Well pray cover up. You’ll get Piers even more confused. If that’s at all possible.”

Lestrade didn’t think it was, but he nevertheless looked for a gown and, not finding one, strode to draw the curtains, ignoring the puzzled, “Cuz?” from outside.

“The water’s cooled now.” Sherlock threw the cloth in, his tone and action peeved.

Lestrade wiped away the splashes from his person and regarded his sweetling. “Should think you’d be glad of that, the snit you were in, having to do the honours, bath-wise.”

“I like bathing you!” came back, accompanied by a pout, and a rapping on the glass pane from without, which they both ignored.

“So why was I getting all the Turkish treatment? Oh.” Lestrade knew that look up from under the fringe, that nibble on the protruding lower lip. “I see.” And what he saw was Sherlock’s gaze dart to the small wooden chest. The chest that held their toys. Lestrade saw…and understood. “Little slip gibbet. Think you’ve got me on leading reins, do you?” He would have said more but the noise at the covered window intensified, becoming knocking and banging sounds. Well, the wind had been picking up all evening. Dangerous – and stupid – to be perched on a shaking ladder.

Then came, “Hi! You’ll never believe it but my on dit’s about Old Nooooo – Oh nooooo – ” which was in turn followed by a crash and a thump, from a long way down.

“I hope your cousin’s all right,” Lestrade remarked.

Sherlock waved a hand. “He usually is.” He sounded…regretful.

“Fine. Just us then.” Lestrade approached his headstrong partner. “So, let’s have you peeled, then. Go to!”

And a decent show the somewhat surprised Sherlock put on for him as he stripped, even without trying. Couldn’t help it.

“On that bed. Now!”

Sherlock’s eyes widened, and then he scrambled to do as ordered.

“Oh no. Not quite.”

At Lestrade’s words, Sherlock looked over his shoulder, then turned over, obeying the slow circular turn of Lestrade’s forefinger. Lestrade regarded him. “You haven’t got me on any sort of strings. All that pepper and vinegar gets you nowhere, pet. Haven’t you learnt that yet? if you want something, need something, you have to ask. And then I might, just might, grant it.” He spoke louder, over Sherlock’s attempt at interruption. “But not tonight. Tonight’s for me and you know it. And I want…”

And oh, his lamb’s face as Lestrade approached. A picture better than any in some niffy-naffy exhibition, that was.

“You,” Lestrade finished. “And I’ll be having you. Right about…now.” He was still damp from his tubbing, he realised as his skin touched Sherlock’s. No matter. the room was warm, and Sherlock warmer than that as Lestrade crawled up him to kiss him, long and slow, taking his time, biting just a little to show Sherlock what was what. He smiled; the firelight revealed Sherlock’s pulse beating hard in his lower jaw. Curious, Lestrade placed a finger at Sherlock’s neck, feeling the life beat through his sweetling.

And that made him want his mouth there, lingering on that elegant neck and those waiting nipples. He took Sherlock’s arms, spreading them out and up for Sherlock to curl aristocratic fingers around the headboard, holding tight as that extra-sensitive spot under his ear was abraded by Lestrade’s evening whiskers. Lestrade pressed on, there and at those nicely ripened blood-pink nubs, until his sweetheart’s sighs were gasps and his tiny white teeth held his fleshy underlip prisoner in an attempt to stifle betraying squeals and moans.

“Love,” Lestrade husked. “I want to hold you down like this and tease you till you’re begging me, but I can’t. I’ll drive myself into a fit.” He clambered free and swung across the bed to open the drawer of their table for supplies. He loved watching Sherlock do this, when Sherlock was disposed to take him, enjoyed the sight of that long back, that pert arse. He doubted he presented so fine a picture. Didn’t care. Not when he could kneel between Sherlock’s legs and run his hands up the backs of those slim thighs, spreading them wide and wider still. He couldn’t take his time, not now, had to go straight for Sherlock’s length, had to get his mouth to that delicious waiting hardness.

“Thought you weren’t going to tease me,” came in rumble from under and above, seconds before Sherlock stretched and repositioned himself, scratching his toe nails down Lestrade’s back. Lestrade laughed. The rake-shame. Literally. Then Sherlock was the one to react – to Lestrade sliding the cold glass of the bottle of oil he’d taken down Sherlock’s belly. What there was of it. Now it was gone more curved in, in reaction. Lestrade bent his head again, taking Sherlock deeper, sucking hard to make him shiver. He knew that despite that, Sherlock was aware of him uncorking the oil and coating his fingers with it. And yet Sherlock still shook when Lestrade pressed a slicked finger to Sherlock’s hole.

“I, I won’t last if you do that,” confessed Sherlock on one heated rush of breath.

“Don’t want you too. Because I won’t either.” Lestrade’s had to release his delicious mouthful to reply. He took a moment to examine what he’d wrought, how he’d left Sherlock’s cock a deeper hue and dripping-ripe. The sight made him get a hand to himself. Sherlock would have taken him; Lestrade’s quelling look kept him flat. He enjoyed preening for his love, pulling a slow upwards stroke, tightening his fingers just so as he twisted his foreskin over the rim. He outstared Sherlock, daring him to issue any kind of command, any order for Lestrade to hurry. None came. Good. His little bit was learning.

Lestrade bent and aligned himself to treat Sherlock to that blunt, hard pressure at his hole, to force him to accept that long, slow stretch as Lestrade pushed upwards, forwards, joining them. This was a moment Lestrade loved, and he thought Sherlock must – that all men must, that initial intrusion, that moment of overpowering, poised on the sword-edge of pleasure and pain, that not knowing which way it could tip. Sherlock’s small cry was no help in deciphering, but there was no tensing of his body, no repelling. No; Sherlock ached to be filled, to be covered, to be pressed down, just as much Lestrade did when that need rode him.

“I’m not going to be gentle, love,” Lestrade warned, his face close to Sherlock’s.

“Don’t want you to,” came as expected, the need you not to taken as said. Then came Sherlock’s long, guttural, “Ohhh,” as Lestrade sank deep, his first few slower thrusts thundering to a stronger rhythm. And it was Lestrade’s turn to moan, and pant, and groan nonsense words, perhaps, as he ploughed his sweetling, taking his pleasure from him and giving in return. Of course. How could he not? He was almost expelled when Sherlock pulled up his knees, canting his hips. Trying to get more. Craving more. Making Lestrade lift up, bracing his hands either side of Sherlock to drive into him, wringing fractured cries and moans in return when Lestrade hit that perfect spot deep inside.

“More?” Lestrade didn’t wait for an answer. Didn’t need to. He pushed harder, kneeling farther over Sherlock until Sherlock’s knees almost touched his chest. That sight, his love underneath him, at his pleasure clutched at Lestrade’s heart. “You’re mine,” he managed. “Every inch of you. Mine.”

“I know,” Sherlock whispered. “Yours. I know.”

That was all it took to twist the threads of Lestrade’s pleasure together, have it gather, rolling like thunder up from the base of him, threatening to break over him like a storm. He was close, oh so close, but not yet. He had to feel Sherlock’s pleasure first. Bring Sherlock’s pleasure first. And it was near; he could feel it in Sherlock’s tightening grip on his forearms, hear it in Sherlock’s broken cries, see it in his drenched eyes. He pressed down, giving Sherlock a firmer surface against which to writhe, to work his cock, and was rewarded with the sound of Sherlock’s strangled, then suspended gasp and the sight of his flushed face twisted into fierce, beautiful pleasure. It brought his completion too, seconds later, but lasting hours in that way of it things had when pleasure took over time.

He tried not to but collapsed over Sherlock, his face finding a refuge in the curve of that elegant neck. He pressed a smile into Sherlock’s skin in exchange for the laboured breaths catching in his ear, his smile stretching up more at the imperious hands that pressed him flat, keeping him there when he went to shift.So he stayed – no choice, really – until their breathing slowed and calmed and he could fee Sherlock’s heartbeat under him steadying and firming. Only then did he – was he allowed to – drop to one side.

“What.” Sherlock regarded him. “You’re staring.”

“Just wondering when you’ll realise you’re still on duty.”

“Wh – ” Sherlock followed the direction of Lestrade’s glance. towards the bath tub. “Oh for heaven’s sake!” He tutted worse than Mrs Hudson ever had and made a Drury Lane song and dance of clambering from the bed.

“Might be if you hadn’t such a heavy hand with the flannel. Or close to. Heaven, I mean,” Lestrade opined, fighting not to curl away from the too-wet, too-chilled washcloth Sherlock wielded. Still, least the reluctant gentleman’s gentleman had washed Lestrade before himself. And he went to bank the fire before sliding back under the bedclothes.

“Decent footman, we’ll make of you one day,” Lestrade informed him, adding as Sherlock elbowed him and dragged a cold foot down Lestrade’s legs, “Day of Saint Never.”

“In the afternoon,” Sherlock finished for him, wriggling onto his back, then his side until Lestrade cuddled up over him, warming his back. He wiggled his neck, indicating he wanted a kiss or three pressing into it. Lestrade obliged. Of course. Gave him extra for his pains.

“Do you really want a footman?” came suddenly out of the dark.

“Me? Whaffor?” Lestrade chortled. “Don’t need one. With having such an obliging…” Dare he? They never mentioned –

“Husband.” Sherlock stilled, tensed.

Because he was, just as he wasn’t. Could never be, not in the eyes of God or man, despite them having have – albeit unexpectedly – benefit of clergy in front of witnesses. Despite this being recorded in the parish register. Which reminded him –

“Did we ever pay the dues owed?” He knew Sherlock would follow him, would recall the ‘vicar’ mentioning the parish fees.

“No!” Sherlock replied.

Lestrade shrugged, unseen but felt in the dark. “Well, you’re still the best husband…I’ve ever had.” Then he groaned at the precision-sharp elbow catching him in his bread basket. “Little shaver!” he managed. “I’ll teach you –”

And the teaching he did, the mock-struggle that ensued, left him exhausted. Just as he was dropping off to sleep, he suddenly thought back to the incident earlier and said, “I wonder who your cousin was going to tell us about. Someone called O’something, wasn’t it?”

“Don’t know and don’t care.” Sherlock cracked his jaw in a huge yawn and burrowed deeper under the bedclothes, stealing as many as possible.

“Don’t suppose we’ll ever know, not with that weathervane-brain Piers,” Lestrade reasoned, trying to unwind his mummy-like bed fellow from the sheet.

But he was wrong, as he found out the next day, at No 4 Bow Street, the Magistrates Court.

“Lestrade!”

He ignored the voice again, even if it was a real voice this time and not that of Old Bailey. He was just about ready to go hammerish on whoever’d taught that bloody parrot to repeat, “L’Esssstrannnnge!” in a high-pitched voice. No doubt whoever had played dame to the bird imagined the tone to be that of some green girl, a simpering miss making her come-out and enraptured with L’Estrange of Bow Street, the Ardent Agent. Come to think of it, Lestrade would like to settle accounts too with the writer of that serial, one of these days. Yes, John Watson, army surgeon turned author, had a lot to account for.

His name was called again, echoing around the Ready Room, and he sank his head into his hands, covering his ears to muffle it out. He still a lot of writing up too do, giving his account of the Severed Ears case. God above, even the memory of it still made him queasy. Not so Sherlock. Lestrade closed his eyes at the way that little ghoul – and Dr Watson and that Mike Stamford – had seized the gruesome body parts and examined them with relish. And Lestrade still thought there’d been no need, none at all, for Sherlock to have ordered Piers to go undercover as a wharfie, a stevedore, working the docks while they waited for that rum cove Browner’s ship to port in London. Piers had looked – and sounded – so comic: for an entire week. Still, it had kept him out of their way. Lestrade just hoped it wasn’t a small dot in a big picture, that Sherlock wouldn’t continue with that stratagem towards his cousin, wouldn’t –

“Sir.”

It took that and a slight tug at his sleeve to get him to look up. Dimmock, his constable, was indicating with a sharpened pencil Bradstreet. The man was his fellow Public Order Officer, only one content to refer to himself as a Bow Street Runner. Lestrade wasn’t. Hated the nickname. Too much like a running footman for his taste, making him feel he should be dashing alongside or after some Nob’s coach, presumably in this case Sir Lennox, the magistrate. Mind you, he’d love having someone sprint on ahead, preparing his destination place for his arrival, just as he had Sally preparing everything for him here. Lestrade snorted, making Dimmock stare anxiously at him.

“Hey, Lestrade!”

“Oh, what now!” Lestrade grabbed Dimmock’s pencil and snapped it in two in answer to Bradstreet’s call. “Go and bother Gregson instead.” Do Gregson a power of good to bear the weight of Bradstreet’s girds on his shoulders. They were broad enough. Just as he was tall enough.

“Can’t. He’s taking the waters at Royal Tunbridge Wells with Florizel.”

“Who?”

“Prinny! The Prince Regent? George Augustus Frederick of Hanover, Prince of Wales?”

The gabster loved to rub Lestrade raw about the preferment the handsome blond Gregson had found with the prince, who liked the officer to accompany him. Lestrade's two-word reply told his fellow worker what he wished he’d do. Right there, right then.

“Ahooo! Aren’t we the teeter totter, ready to fall at the least touch!” Bradstreet commented. “And here’s me with news for you. You’re wanted. Someone here with something for you.” He smirked. Well, more than usual, even if he was playing his usual joke. Lestrade wasn’t of a humour for it.

“Oh who this time? The King’s Surgeon, wanting to clap me in irons for being a resurrection man and dealing in body parts? It was last week. Or should I say happened in the reign of Queen Dick.” Meaning, never. The gruesome severed ears had given Bradstreet enough ammunition for a sennight. “Oh, hold hard. Lord Byron, yeah, wanting to call me out on an affair of honour, over those damned marbles? Like last month?” When Lord Elgin’s antiquaries had brought Lestrade into contact with High Society, making his fellow officer jealous. “Wait. Must be a load of opera dancers from Drury Lane all a-wanting me.” Irene Adler’s calling at Bow Street for the absent Lestrade was still the subject of conversation – and had made Lestrade the butt of many skits.

“Actually, it was Langdale Pike what was wanting you, with the latest society gossip to discuss, don’t you know.” Bradstreet affected a huffy tone, and Lestrade wouldn’t have any more of it.

“Oh is it. Well he can take his gossip back to whatever lounge or pump room he got it from, because I’m not interested. And I’m tired of this too! Dimmock, you can find me at Angelo’s. Where I’ll get some peace to finish this.” And gathering up his sheaves of paper and his writing irons, Lestrade stamped out, pausing only for Old Bailey to perch on his wrist and ransack his pockets for sunflower seeds, screeching in delight as he did so.

It was only when the departing Lestrade caught up to Bradstreet’s aggrieved, “But Langdale Pike really was w – ” that he remembered who Pike, celebrated gossipmonger with his newspaper and magazine columns, was. Sherlock’s friend, Aesc Musgrave! Damn. He was about to mount the stairs of the off-white four-floor-high building again, braving the ridicule of the clerk on duty at the hall desk, when he noticed the carriage idling at the kerb. Dark-painted, closed four-wheel Brougham, the crest not…unfamiliar. He’d seen it on odd bits and bobs around the Baker Street apartments, usually ones shoved into cupboards or pushed to the backs of high shelves. Intrigued, he approached, to peer in the window.

He jumped as a face suddenly filled the space. It was familiar too, more than, with its pale complexion and dark curls, hatless, as usual, of course and those unusual, indefinable eyes…looked like those of an animal in a menagerie. The door swung open and Sherlock was revealed, as was the other occupant of the space, sitting vis-à-vis to him. Just as Sherlock looked trapped and desperate and fuming with impotent rage, she looked cool and collected. Amused, almost.

“Inspector L –”

“Run!” broke in Sherlock over her words. “While you still can.”

“While…” His turn to break off. The woman, not The Woman, as he might have supposed at a quick glance, was pretty. Pale, with long dark wavy hair and a mocking glint in her very dark blue eyes and an amused twist to her full lips. It was that wry demeanour he recalled, more than her pleasant, modulated voice, her expensive and slim-fitting formal dress or her beauty, although he’d have betted for Dr Watson, it was the latter every time. “But she’s –”

Sherlock’s quick flick of his glance downwards and across made Lestrade trace its path and he swallowed, seeing the mouth of a small, slim metal barrel protrude from under the woman’s bag. Armed, he completed his sentence. Hence Sherlock’s air of captivity. Although perfectly capable of defending himself, his breeding would make him loath to fight off a lady.

“Inspector Lestrade,” the woman finished her speech, her invitation, sitting back a little, and he obediently entered, brushing against Sherlock as he took his place next to him, trying not to flinch as the door clanged shut in his wake. A lackey, of course, but the effect was eerie. The silence was broken by the, “Yarr!” from the driver’s box and then the clip-clop of hooves. He was jolted as they set off.

“So,” he began. “You not been answering then? Big brother, I mean? To merit this personal invitation, from his…”

The woman didn’t fill the gap he left, but Lestrade noticed the gold ring on her finger. Mycroft wore one too! This couldn’t, could it, be his – No.

Sherlock didn’t answer either, just huddled into himself, inside that greatcoat, and looked half peeved, half furious.

“So what did you ignore, letters? Pigeons? Menservants?”

“All of the above, inspector,” replied the woman. “Anthea,” she anticipated his next question. “Will do.” And her manner ratcheted up from dry to derisive. He watched her for a few moments, but her head remained down as she read a book. It seemed to absorb her.

“Never mind, bantling,” Lestrade consoled Sherlock. “Think of the hour. Listen.” A church bell rang as they turned along Pall Mall. “It’s nearing lunch. Think of your brother’s stomach – we’ll probably get a good bite or two out of this. Maybe something sent in from one of those fancy clubs at St James’s. Crockford’s. That gourmet place. They get partridges for breakfast there!” Or at least, so gossip had it.

“Sounds ghastly. More gourmand than gourmet,” Sherlock replied with a sneer. Then he sat up, head tilted to one side. If he’d been a dog, his ears would have pricked up. “And we’re not going all the way along Pall Mall to St James’s. We’re stopping here. So, Carlton House. Well, well.”

That was a house, was it, screened off by that massive line of columns they were driving alongside, stretching down the south side of the Mall like a line of whitened trees in a wood, their branches meeting to form arches? Well, his highness would need something to keep the unwashed from his house, wouldn’t he. House indeed. Not quite big enough to be called a palace, for all Lestrade knew, or not classical enough, maybe.

“So Mycroft’s moved his…base?”

“His base of operations? Yes.” Sherlock eyed Anthea as he spoke, and she looked up and met his gaze unflinchingly but revealed nothing. What was there to reveal? Or what was revealed by that? So Mycroft was no longer at the palace of King George, poor mad King George, but was instead at the palace of the regent, the Prince of Wales. Oh. A big change, really. And presumably the sign of more…changes to come. It was treason to speak of such things, wasn’t it? Lestrade shivered a little as they slowed to a stop under a sticking-out bit of roof in the middle of the colonnade. It was grand-looking, with a column at each corner.

“Well? Bye,” came from Anthea suddenly, just as the carriage door opened from without. She barely looked up as they alighted, but Lestrade thought he caught a glimpse of her mouth turning up at one corner, in a way that really couldn’t be called a smile, much less a grin.

“Well, if you want to leg it, it’s now,” Lestrade advised, watching the coach drive off and a phalanx of liveried and powdered-wigged footmen advance. No, too late. They were escorted, the politest way to put it, between the porch’s columns into a foyer. It was enormous. More columns, More arches. Statues on plinths and in nooks. Lamps. A ceiling so high Lestrade could hardly see it, not without cricking his neck. Chairs and benches every so often, for when you got tired on your way to the doors. Nice.

“The Small Hall, sirs,” murmured the footman. He bowed. “Through which we cross to the Great Hall.” He didn’t stop bowing, just waved an arm.

Sherlock scowled. “We’re not gawkers, up from the country for a Grand Tour of the capital, clutching our copies of Ackermann’s Microcosm of London, man. Take us to my brother. Now.”

“Please,” added Lestrade, wondering if insulting the prince’s servants was a prisonable offence. He had a feeling he should know, even if his training hadn’t covered it.

“He’ll be in the room nearest to the kitchen, I should think. He usually is,” Sherlock added, his voice set to carry. His silver-blue gaze swept the hall’s occupants, checking who reacted, who left. To report back? Would they scurry through the corridors? Pass the words on in a human chain? Squeeze through secret passages through the walls? No-one seemed to move, to slip behind a screen, for instance. “Ah, no need,” Sherlock surmised. “He knows what I think.”

“And say,” Lestrade added. The footman was still bent over and looked most uncomfortable. Another took over from him and led them out through a door on the left, through an enormous ante-room and tapped deferentially on a door at the far end of that.

“Do come in, Sherlock, Inspector,” came the treacle-smooth and syrup-sick tones of Mycroft Holmes, and Sherlock groaned.


	2. Chapter Two

“Don’t let him get to you,” Lestrade counselled. His words made Sherlock shoot up ramrod-straight, like a sentry scenting the sergeant. A wicked light came into his eyes, and Lestrade wanted to groan.

“Big brother.” Sherlock greeted the elder Holmes, the emphasis very much on the first word. Too soon for Mycroft’s lips to tighten into a tuck and his forehead to pleat into a fold. Sherlock glanced around at the bookshelves and busts, the carpets and chairs. “Who’s in that painting?” He pointed at the woman.

“Who – Why, that’s the Regent’s good lady wife!” Mycroft answered.

“Ah yes. Of course it is. Mrs Maria Fitzherbert. Thought I recognised her.” Sherlock nodded.

“Nice one, sweetheart,” muttered Lestrade. “Had that saved up, yeah?”

“Thought it might fit a case, at some point,” Sherlock admitted, watching narrow-eyed at Mycroft’s determined lack of reaction.

I shouldn’t encourage him, Lestrade mentally chastised himself. Yet he felt in his bones that Lord Holmes deserved it, somehow. If Sherlock was too ripe and ready by half, always up to something, then Mycroft was too smoky by half, too suspicious. Despite never having met her – yet – it was their mother Lestrade felt sorry for. And himself, when he had any sympathy to spare.

“First, nuncheon.” Mycroft pointed a small smile at them, then dropped half of it to point an eyebrow at the servant.

“Oh, let’s skip that, gundiguts. Instead tell us why your hired assassin dragged us here?” Sherlock ordered.

“Please?” Lestrade threw in again, rolling his eyes.

Mycroft dismissed the manservant with a twitch of his lips and a twist of his brow. They must teach all the new coves in his employ the signals, Lestrade reason, imagining some poor unfortunate sketching all the quivers and quakes of Lord Holmes’s countenance and some even poorer unfortunate having to con them all, for a quizzing. His turn to twitch his lips – hiding a smile. He followed Sherlock to a comfy sopha, on the other side of the room from its occupant.

Mycroft opened his mouth to speak but closed it again at the burst of hammering and sawing from outside. Oh, course. The place was in a constant state of construction, its owner no sooner finished one bit than he met some new architect or mason or glazier or painter and bang, he’d started in on another bit. He thought the Regent would only stop when he ran out of funds. Sherlock said his highness’d finish by knocking the place to the ground and using the bits somewhere else, for all he’d had half the city remade, to make a ruddy great pathway from his park to this, his palace.

“Quickly or we’re leaving?” Sherlock counselled.

“Very well.” Mycroft drew himself up and approached, fixing them both with a glare, ignoring a crash and some choice shouting about told you your end needed to be bigger coming from without. “I need you to investigate if the Duke of Wellington has really run mad.”

In the silence that followed, Sherlock asked blankly, “Who?”

Lestrade tried to sink down in his seat. The lecture that followed from Lord Holmes was like something John might have given, only his had been gasped out, in broken words, when they’d encountered the Iron Duke.

“To quote Lestrade, it’s no bread and butter of mine.” Sherlock stood to go, buttoning his coat.

The dry boots chose that expression a’purpose, Lestrade had no doubt, to prick his brother where it hurt: in the stomach. “And what bread and butter is it of yours, sir?” he added. “I mean, I appreciate you care about the fellow. We all do.”

“Do we? Why?” Sherlock enquired.

“Sherlock, he’s a hero! Brought an end to the Peninsular Wars!”

“Did he? Is that why everything’s Wellington now? Hessians, so I’m informed by dear cousin Piers, are now Wellington boots. Filet de bœuf en croûte, Mrs Hudson wails, is now Beef Wellington, although hers is still the same meat, still tough as boot leather – oh, is that the connection? And there’s even a colour called Wellington, a particularly dull shade of purple, named, it’s said after the colour the duke’s cheeks become when he’s enraged.”

Lestrade hadn’t known that. Wondered as to its veracity.

“Indeed. It’s all so very…uninteresting. But Mycroft’s no soldier. I imagine he was in favour of the war, if anything. At least inasmuch as he was in charge of distributing contracts to industrialists for the manufacturing of uniforms, say, or for the casings of bullets. Shouldn’t be at all surprised if he prolonged it as long as it suited his purposes. Hmm.” Sherlock stepped right up to his brother to stare hard into his eyes. Mycroft didn’t flinch. “I see.” Sherlock nodded. “Costing too much, was it, the war? You owe the duke for putting an end to it, before it bankrupted the country?”

“Sher-lock!” Lestrade was on his feet now.

“There is that.” Mycroft gave a tiny nod. “That and his grace being needed…in the government. As Prime Minister.”

“What? But he isn’t in g –”

“You don’t need to know about that, do you,” Mycroft interrupted Lestrade. They waited politely for a rat-a-tat and a claaaang from outside to stop.

“Be nice when it’s finished,” said Lestrade, consolingly, watching Mycroft pinch the bridge of his nose.

“So his highness is leaning towards the Whigs is he, to round off his rebellion against his parents, the Tories. What? It’s obvious. And just as obvious that you don’t want that and you’re counting on Wellington, whom I presume is a Tory, to march the country that way. Huh. Dance to your tune, more like.”

Lestrade didn’t doubt his lambling was right. Wondered though, if Mycroft wouldn’t find wrapping the Iron Duke around his finger a bit more difficult than he seemed to think it’d be. Comparing the oily manipulator before him and the straight-to-it-and-at-breakneck-speed soldier he’d met at the Musgraves, Lestrade knew who’d back in a fight.

“Not interested. Now if that’s all?”

“Sherlock.”

Sherlock stopped and turned at the almost-purr in his brother’s tone.

“In the absence of a Tory minister the Regent will…listen to, we will need more Tory ministers in the Commons. The…right sort of Tory ministers.”

His words, oiled and wrapped and scented as they were, seemed to drop from a height and make a noise when they landed. Sherlock stiffened.

“No.” It rose from his depths now. The exchange meant nothing to Lestrade but as usual the brothers communicated without words.

“Yes. The seat for Holmes Deep is still empty.” Mycroft crossed to stand behind his desk.

Any other time Lestrade might have been tempted to laugh at the pronouncement, coming from that smellfungus Lord Holmes, but not now, not when Sherlock span around, fast and furious.

“No.” The splash of a stone dropped into a deep well.

“Yes.” The screech of a whetstone on a blade.

“I will not become a member of parliament!” Sherlock marched to Mycroft’s desk and banged his fist down on it.

“Hold hard. The pair of you.” Lestrade added the last as a warning. He’d no desire to be mopping blood off no doubt priceless carpets. Wouldn’t know how to. “Is that what this is all about? Needing a member of the House who’ll steer the other MPs? Seems to me you’d do that to a turn, Lord Holmes.”

“Don’t talk such fustian. Mycroft’s far too busy running the country to become a member of parliament,” mocked Sherlock. “But I won’t do it. You can’t force me.”

Lestrade really wished he could speak Holmes, to understand what was said in the silence that followed.

“I’ll have myself declared insane and so unfit to govern!” Sherlock burst out, seeming to lose whatever point they’d been soundlessly debating.

“Little one. Insanity is no barrier.” Mycroft gestured at a painting, one of a row of…former Prime Ministers. Oh.

“Very well. I’ll campaign for reforms. Of parliament, of law…the abolition of the slave trade!”

“Sherlock. I’d hate to have to intervene.” Mycroft indicated the painting again and Lestrade shifted to read the brass plaque. Spencer Perceval. All Lestrade could recall about him was that he’d been the only British Prime Minister to have been…assassinated. In office.

“So far,” murmured Mycroft, his voice like an expensive bolt of silk being ripped down the middle. “Although of course the strain of the job can lead to…illness.” He skewered another portrait with a glance. The Earl of Liverpool. He’d got himself a brain clot and retired, Lestrade knew. “Or even early death.” The painting he speared this time was George Canning. Four months he’d lasted in office.

“Not surprised no one wants the job,” Lestrade muttered.

“Fine. You leave me no choice but to put myself beyond the reach of the political – nay; the civilised world. And with that I take my leave.” Sherlock bowed

“Sherlock!” This time Mycroft’s voice didn’t have him spinning around. “Where are you going?”

“Prison,” came the surprising answer. “New Gaol, I rather think. That’s where everyone gets sent for sedition, is it not, Lestrade? A few speeches in favour of, oh, let’s say Catholic emancipation, or the abolition of rotten boroughs – of which Holmes Deep is the rottenest – and I’ll soon be detained. Good day!”

“Always said you’d be clapped in irons,” Lestrade panted, hurrying to keep up with Sherlock’s seven-league-boots stride from the palace. “For your cant talk, if nothing else. Nomination borough or proprietarial borough is what you’re sposed to call ’em. That some flash you picked up at Angelo’s?”

“Oh, probably.” Outside by now, weaving around newly delivered piles of marble, Sherlock was hailing a Hackney.

“So where’re we off to? You’re not taking –” Your brother’s case, he didn’t finish. Couldn’t, under that quelling blue-silver glimmer.

“Duke Street. Mendoza’s,” came the answer. Sherlock settled back in the seat.

“The boxing salon? I can see you’d need to wallop seven bells out of someone after that, but...” And Sherlock would prefer the Gentleman Jew ex-prizefighter to Gentleman Jackson at Bond Street, patronised by half of high society. Mendoza was favoured by radicals and independents, socialists, even. “Ah. I see. Who’re you hoping to meet up with?”

“Oh, any ‘intellectual’ with a ‘reformist’ newspaper and consequently pockets to let who’ll take my coin to print some religious blasphemy or political Chartism that I scribble or some satirical cartoon that I daub. Something about the prince should do it, I fancy. Merely attaching my name to a drawing of the regent depicted as a huge cream cake in a regimental uniform should get me shunned by the Ton.”

“Or get you your own weekly column.”

“Hmm.” Sherlock peeped over at him. “I won’t really have to go to gaol, you know.”

“Pity. Do you the power of good.” Lestrade folded his arms and sat back in his turn. Then he realised this was Sherlock’s Hackney. Oh, not the family carriage, of course, but that disreputable coach Sherlock owned with its...dubious driver Sherlock employed. “Standing orders, your jarvey got, yeah? To follow any cab you get into? Or did you just have him pin a tail on you when you got into the family coach.” Either way, it made Lestrade breathe a bit easier, especially with the driver Sherlock used. “One day you’ll have to tell me what you’ve got on that leather-head up a’top.”

Sherlock eyed him. “You don’t have to play nursemaid, you know. Especially being such a very busy Public Officer.” He flicked a long finger against Lestrade’s battered satchel-bag, as if he could see the sheaves of paper inside, all the paperwork Lestrade had to do.

“Oh this’ll save time.”

At Sherlock’s slight frown, Lestrade continued: “Having a very busy Public Officer with you should save me having to get you from the Clink later, which means I don’t lose my secretary.” He patted the leather bag, making the papers crinkle. “That would be you, by the by. What with me being such a very busy Public Officer.” He raised a warning finger to head off any protests from Viscount Holmes that he was no pen-scratcher, no ink-sniffer. Fat chance of forestalling Sherlock – they were still settling the point when they drew into Duke Street.

Settling his clothes after their very pleasurable wrestling – not boxing – match, Lestrade eyed the academy. No gracious white-stone building on a graceful street, this. Still, it was some sort of home of the Sweet Science, as Lestrade recalled boxing was dubbed – recalled from Piers’s days of love of the Fancy. Thank the Good Lord that hadn’t lasted long. “Boxiana,” Lestrade muttered, ascending the stairs to the first floor and remembering Piers ankling about, hatless and shoeless in shirtsleeves and loose drawers, hair shorn short and a huge black eye painted on, and an unwitting Mrs Turner screaming the street down. “Oh, nothing love.”

“Oh hellfire and burning damnation!” Sherlock had forced his way past the guard at the top of the stairs and pushed into the room. The room, its plain wooden floorboards sagging under the weights and clubs and cords piled along the walls and into the corners around the roped-off ringue, was full of...women.

“‘Ladies’ Defence Hour’,” Lestrade read off the blackboard. Although it looked like offence to him, the way the women had their fists up high and were throwing and ducking punches while their attendants and Abigails, seated on the row of wooden stools, covered their eyes and mouths. “Very progressive. Liberal enough for you? Or scientific, I should say? What with Mendoza called the father of scientific boxing.” He sneezed at the sawdust and rope smell emanating from the room.

“Let’s away.” Sherlock had finished sneering at the waiting ladies’ maids and footmen. “There’s nothing here for me. I’ll –”

“Sherlock! Mr Holmes! Here I am!”

They both turned at the feminine voice, to be confronted by a small, slim woman wearing a drapey tunic-thing, her long dark-blonde curls escaping from their ribbon and her large dove-grey eyes regarding them vaguely.

“Not Mr,” she corrected, cocking her head to one side and staring at the ceiling. “ _Viscount_ Holmes. Sherlock. Thank you for coming.”

And their hostess over the last Christmas holidays when they’d solved the centuries-old Musgrave Riddle, held out her hand to shake. Whose they weren’t sure – Lady Musgrave held it loosely between them. It was strange, shaking such a dainty hand wrapped around in strips of cloth, one of which was…blood-stained.

“Thank me for...” Sherlock being so nonplussed made Lestrade grin.

“Yes. I wanted to see you.” She smiled serenely as she sank to sit down cross-legged on the floor.

“Did you send for me, madam? A, a link boy? A letter?”

“How would I do that?” her ladyship queried of the still-bewildered Sherlock. “You’re the cleverest man in London. My son said so. So you have to help Arthur. Make him whole again. I broke him, you see. Oh, I didn’t _mean_ to.”

“Son?” Sherlock’s turn to blink in confusion.

“Sherlock, this is Lady Musgrave! Aesc’s mother,” Lestrade hissed.

“So who’s Arthur?”

“That I don’t know,” Lestrade confessed. “Erm, your ladyship?”

“Oh, the Iron Duke. Wellesley, Duke of Wellington,” came the surprising answer. “He will keep insisting I become his, and I keep telling him no.”

“Madam, he’s _already married_!” Lestrade whispered.

“Yes, but she’s dreadfully quiet and she’s made his home so dull nobody will go there,” replied Lady Musgrave.

“ _Still married!_ ” Lestrade hissed.

“Oh, it’s not marriage he wants from me,” Lady M explained. “He wants to –”

“We get it!” Sherlock interrupted.

Which was more than Old Nosey did, at any rate, Lestrade reckoned. Oh wait. Old Nosey? Piers had been trying to tell them something – this! – about the duke!

“Quite run mad with the unrequited...lust,” her ladyship was explaining. She stared up at Lestrade and licked her lips. Sherlock scowled and stepped between them, shoving Lestrade back. _Rude,_ as The Woman might have said.

“We keep hearing he’s mad, insane, what have you,” Lestrade called, over Sherlock’s shoulder. “What’s he doing that’s so moonstruck?”

“Well, since I denied him, he’s denying _himself_. He can’t bear to look upon his own likeness any longer. There’s a precedent for it, in classical literature, of course. If we refer to... Oh yes.”

Twilight-tenuous she might be, but she understood Sherlock’s impatient signals. “He’s destroying likenesses of himself,” she finished. “Smashing or slashing them. He’s rejecting himself because I rejected him. Make him stop, oh, and tell him I’m sorry?”

And the lady hopped up and retook her place with her partner, delivering a hefty and lightning-fast uppercut that took her opponent by surprise and laid her out _thump!_ on the floor. “That’s good, isn’t it?” came in her dulcet tones as people rushed to the downed woman. “Well, not for her, of course, but…”

“Third time fair or fatal,” Lestrade remarked making a quick exit, Sherlock in tow. “That’s the third time you’ve been tasked with this. And you can’t refuse a lady.”

“Wouldn’t dare refuse that one.” Sherlock rubbed his jaw as if feeling the bare-knuckled knock-out blow.

“Is it true, do you think? That Wellington’s gone crazed? Smashing up statues of himself and whatnot? Or is it just a parcel of ’ol crams?”

“Haven’t an earthly. But I know someone who will know all the erm, what is it, in and outs of a duck’s arse?”

“Sherlock!” Lestrade berated the grinning viscount. Lestrade only descended to the vernacular of his youth, well, when no one of Quality was listening. And this area bristled with Quality. He listened to a municipal clock strike. “So you’ll be off to catch him on the strut, then, yeah?”

“Indeed. As much as I despise myself for uttering these words, let’s go and find my cousin Piers.” And a resigned Sherlock threaded his arm through Lestrade’s.

“Lamb, I can’t just go off on a jolly with you, much as I want to,” he lamented, nevertheless squeezing Sherlock’s tightly.

“Not even if I treat you to an ice at Gunther’s?” Sherlock shielded his eyes against the low-lying sun. Its light showed his smile.

“You, springing for sweetmeats? You, provided with ching? You, who’ll be a’borrowing some mint sauce off of me and you know it.” Lestrade chuckled. “Sorry, but I have to get back to work…”

He trailed off at the sight of Frank, his Bow Street boy, rushing up, waving madly at him to stay still until Frank could join him. Not even the effort he expended running about the city heightened Frank’s colour – his face was still as pasty as uncooked dough. Fitting for his blackcurrant eyes, currently streaming against the wind. His chest was heaving from his exercise – had he followed the cab to Carlton House, then their cab here? – and he’d no breath to explain, merely unbuttoning his jacket and pulling out the creased, bent letter. Lestrade tried to recall if he’d ever heard Frank speak, at all. If he wasn’t charging about London he was inhaling food, fuelling himself for his two-legged London gallops.

“From the magistrate’s court?”

Frank held out the missive mutely to the questioning Lestrade. He blinked both eyes, the good one, then the lazier one, stilling into immobility and his greasy fringe settled back down on both sides of his forehead, like a half-drawn-back theatre curtain. That probably meant yes, although Frank likely as not couldn’t read. Lestrade could, and furthermore recognised the writing on the packet. Sir Presley Lennox, chief magistrate.

“Oh.” He finished scanning the lines and looked up at his light o’love. “Seems you’ve got myself an assistant for your latest commission. Which would be me, by the by. I’m away to Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens.”

“Afternoon tea while taking in an orchestral concert in the bandstand with the demi-monde?”

“Not quite,” Lestrade answered Sherlock. “And if I don’t get the chance to go exploring all the close walks and listening to the plash of the fountains while being revitalised by the beds of sweet-smelling flowers, I will be getting in a  good gawk at the Rotunda. Where I’m investigating if His Grace has indeed gone crazy.”

“What? But the note doesn’t mention anything about – Oh.” Sherlock’s raised brow acknowledged that he wasn’t the only detective in the duo.

“Yes. Seems someone’s been and got at the props being readied for the reenactment for the Battle of Vitoria they’re putting on as a spectacle there. The management are up in arms. Oh, no funning intended.”

“And the very afternoon Wellington should be there, ‘kindly and gracefully giving the benefit of his expertise. What a disgrace.’” Sherlock impersonated the chief magistrate’s voice in quoting from the man’s bulletin.

“Be interesting to see what was smashed.” Lestrade nodded.

“One question. What,” asked Sherlock, his brow furrowed, “was the Battle of Vitoria and who won?”

“You need to catch up on your Wellingtonia, especially seeing as how you’re looking into his affairs,” Lestrade counselled him. “See what you can find out from Piers and we’ll compare notes later, yeah?”

He managed a quick squeeze of Sherlock’s hand as they parted, Lestrade for the south bank. They had to be circumspect in public, of course. And it was no twelve-labour task, not when they could be as close as they chose, in private. Still, mused Lestrade, ferreting out the nearest livery stable to hire a hack, be nice to spend an evening at the Gardens with his viscountship. Oh, not for Sherlock – little shaver would more than likely rail at the gawking crowds, criticise the music and explain how the fireworks worked and the juggling or fire-eating or tightrope-walking was done. But Lestrade thought he himself would like to wander among the ruins and under the arches in the light of the lanterns, sit and listen to the concert and take an arrack punch and cold meat supper in a decorated box – with his love.

 

Mrs Hudson was the first to spy him when he arrived home, hours later. He saw her first, hovering near the door to the first-floor living room.

“I kept your dinner,” she whispered, although if anything she should have raised her voice, to be heard over the louder ones within. “I’ll have it sent up as I’m away now.”

In normal houses, he reflected, that would be via a servant. A maid, say. Or footman. Here, in Sherlock’s servant-sparing house of the future in the present, it was via a box on ropes that was pulled up and down the shaft cut into the wall for that purpose.

“You’re my saviour,” he acknowledged gratefully. “What is it?”

“Gammon and spinach!” came from inside the room. “Fudge!” Not like John to shout. “A bag of moonshine. Trumpery. Fustian nonsense. Sham!” Such a lot. “A Banbury tale of a cock and bull!” he added.

“John –” Sherlock broke off to yield his place by the fire to Lestrade, passing him his half-finished glass of wine as he did so. Warmed by the viscount’s own hand. Lovely. “How was the enchanted sylvan glade in the harsh light of day?” Sherlock murmured.

“Awful. All sawdust and painted boards. And that showpiece tower – just a wooden shed.” Lestrade drank deep. “Best of it is, the rooks tried to charge us the shilling entrance fee!” He drained the glass.

“All my eye,” John concluded, finishing striding about with his hands clasped under his coat behind him. “Rigmarole.”

“Finished?” Sherlock eyed him. “And you can’t communicate with your fellows solely by mixing together old saws with new argot and seasoning it with purple prose, you know.” His quieter, “Well, _you_ can. And do,” was almost lost under John’s, “Oh! Oh! That’s very similar to what that anonymous review in that women’s magazine said about my writing!”

“What, this one?” As Sherlock plucked _The Ladies' Magazine, or Entertaining Companion for the Fair Sex, Appropriated Solely for their use and Amusement_ from the side table, Lestrade pretended to himself that his viscountship had the grace to look ashamed.

“What’s occasioned this battle-royal?” Lestrade wondered if he should get out his brass-tipped cane of office, to quell the argument.

“I’m simply saying that Sherlock’s wrong.”

“Nothing simple about that,” Lestrade replied, grinning, grinning more at Sherlock’s face.

“There’s no way that His Grace the Duke of Wellington could have been ape-barmy by what, unrequited…lust? He’d simply slake it elsewhere! Half of London’s panting after him, what with him being such a noble hero, tall, well-built, in that glorious uniform, sitting his horse so beautifully, the best waltzer in Europe, with those penetrating, all-seeing eyes, and so masterful, _forceful_ , even…”

Lestrade exchanged an eye roll with Sherlock. Seemed John’s prose was soon to feature a straight-backed, Roman-nosed aristocrat-soldier, galloping fresh off the battlefield to the ballroom, still in spurs and with his whip in hand…and very possibly called the Duke of...Bellington.

“As deathless as that sounds, I find cousin Piers agrees with your diagnosis, Doctor,” Sherlock said, pouring Lestrade more wine.

“Catch him tooling around Hyde Park in his curricle, did you?” Lestrade enquired, wishing he’d seen Sherlock in the midst of the _Ton_ at that place at the fashionable hour.

“Yes.” Sherlock shuddered. “But he gave me to understand that Wellington could make himself a new shirt every day from the amount of linen handkerchiefs dropped for him in London alone.”

“And which he strides over, unseeing, his mind on far distant vistas,” John added, his fingers making writing twitches.

“Then if he isn’t lovesick, why is he acting cracked?” Lestrade enquired.

“More like to be the burden of his duties.” John rotated his head on his neck and gave a sharp, short nod. “The horrors he’s seen – and done – weighing heavily on him.”

“Battlefield shock?” Sherlock queried.

John gave a second tight nod. “But more. Not just physical shock accompanied by horrifying circumstances. But what it brings. Profound emotional shock and terror, contemplative fear, or fear continually revived by the imagination. It has a much more intense and lasting effect on the mind than simple physical shock has.”

There was a silence in which of them questioned John’s...interest in the matter. Sherlock rose and silently poured John more wine, brushing his fingers against John’s as he did so.

“It’s possible, I suppose,” Lestrade said, eventually. “I learned today we lost three and a half thousand men at Vitoria alone.”

John made a harsh noise. “About half what we lost at Talavera, then. The British Army suffered over twenty-five thousand casualties over the course of the Peninsular Wars. And lost almost another two hundred thousand to wounds, accidents and disease.”

“That’s...” Lestrade shook his head, unable to go on. “So you think he’s suffering from some sort of revulsion, or guilt about his role in the campaign?”

John shrugged, tight-lipped.

“Well –” Lestrade, obedient to the shrill whistle, crossed to the hatch. “I can find out by observing His Grace tonight.” He retrieved his plate. “I’ll be there anyway. On duty. At the installation of the Wellington Monument at Hyde Park Corner.” He pushed the fragrant breast of chicken into the middle of the hunk of bread and wrapped it in cloth, resigned to eating his rations on the march – again. He wondered if there was a polite way to take his wine with him.

“Hyde Park? That makes twice in one day.” Sherlock twirled into his greatcoat.

“Quite the buck you’re becoming,” Lestrade quipped, signalling Sherlock should bend for Lestrade to smooth the greatcoat’s shoulders for him. He was unsurprised Sherlock was going too.

“What’s that grin for?” murmured Sherlock.

“Oh, just thinking, us, out on a nice evening carriage ride round a pretty park. Beats Vauxhall hollow,” Lestrade admitted.

“Alongside. Alongside the park. Much the quicker route, given weather, time of year, day of the week, time of day...” And the unromantic viscount strode out, almost redeeming himself by waiting in the hall for Lestrade and John. Almost.

 

In Park Lane, John surveyed the gathering crowds.“Better walk from here. It’s busy.”

“Too busy,” came Lestrade’s summation as they alighted and made their way through the Greek-looking marble entranceway into the park. He raised his voice against the military band playing. “Yes; he’s popular. I understand that.”

“Did he want it here, whatever it is, so he doesn’t have to go far to look at it? That’s his house there.” Sherlock indicated the big square white building, graceful in the evening light a little way beyond the park gate. “Number One, London.” He sounded envious. He’d have loved that address, Lestrade reckoned, seeing as he thought that his title anyway.

“Don’t see His Nibs, but all the world and his wife’s here. Especially the wives!” Lestrade looked at the massed ranks of women, standing arm in arm and resolute in an almost military fashion around a three-layer plinth, as yet untenanted. “They all planning on dropping linen hankies, then? Why are they all here?”

‘“Because the monument, produced from melted-down captured enemy cannon, is funded by donations from British women totalling ten thousand pounds,”’ John read from a pamphlet. “They’re a patriotic group called the Ladies of England, it says, and oh, I say.” He pointed at a line of print. “This is London's _first public nude sculpture_ since antiquity! Well goodness. I can’t imagine any ladies we know will be –”

“MRS HUDSON!” cried Sherlock, pointing at his housekeeper, one of the rank and file in prime position around the waiting base. “What’s the meaning of this?”

“I’m a Lady of England, dear!” she called back.

“Yes indeed, this is...erected by the ladies,” said one wag in the crowd to his friend, who nodded.

“It’s amazing what ladies can raise,”he agreed with a wink.

“Satirists!” breathed John.

“Ackerman’s Acolytes,” Sherlock sniffed.

Yes, he’d never been too keen on the Repository of Arts, the famous print shop and gallery, Lestrade recalled. Never window-gazed there.

“Who are all these men, then?” John queried, nodding at the swelling ranks. “Looking grim and holding thick strips of cloth?”

“Erm, Gentlemen of England, I should think. Ready to forcibly bind the Ladies’ eyes lest the sight of nudity assault them,” Sherlock guessed.

“Good luck to anyone attempting to bind Mrs Hudson’s eyes against her will,” Lestrade muttered. He groaned as he saw a further group. “Beaux en masse. What are they this week, Bloods? Aesthetes?”

“Even worse.” Sherlock ran his eye over their cropped locks and plain dress bare of quizzing glasses, decorative fobs and watch chains. “Radicals.”

“Is that – It bloody is! I hardly recognised him now he’s lost the chunk! Lord sodding Byron! I’ve a score to settle with him!” Lestrade had and all, after the Elgin Marbles doings down at the docks, with milord over there getting stuck in trying to prevent the ‘stolen’ sculptures being taken to be exhibited in central London. Lestrade had had the bruises for ages. “And who’s that with him?”

“Leigh Hunt!” gasped, was that _Piers_? All grease-combed centre-parted hair and enveloped in a plain cloak.

“Isn’t he in gaol?” Lestrade was sure he'd arrested the bloke at some point.

“Oh, he gets let out for special occasions,” he was informed before Piers slunk off to wangle himself into the hallowed group. Huh. Lestrade’d special occasion that, that, _independent_ , given half a chance. He could go to the devil and burn his arse on the coals.

“And you’d best join that group. Your fellows.” A smirking Sherlock pointed out the knot of Public Officers, huddling near the gate. “Those Bow –”

“Don’t you dare!” threatened Lestrade.

“Or?”

“Or you know what,” Lestrade assured the cheeky Jack of legs, Sherlock’s breathed, “Promise?” still ghosting in his ear as he headed off to Do His Duty.

And what a duty it turned out to be, right from the first appearance of the ceremonial bier bearing the sculpture…to the discovery that the eighteen-foot high statue was…too big for the entrance gate. From the arrival of His Grace and his escorting two regiments of foot soldiers…to their knocking a hole in the adjoining wall for the memorial to fit through. Lucky some of ’em had charges and the other lot fuses. From the rushing forward of the Gentlemen of England to prevent the Ladies catching sight of the sculpture, their having been cautioned against laying hands, equipped with blindfolds or not, on the Fairer Sex…to the discovery that the statue’s well, _modesty_ was preserved … by a fig leaf. The melee that ensued when the monument was set in place and all was not revealed was typically English.

“Sir!” Lord Byron had the shivering sculptor by the lapels and was screaming in his face. “Have you taken fig leaf of your senses?” He turned around to half-bow at the applause from his toadies.

“Well, this will be a place of great attraction come the height of the Season,” sighed the witt from earlier, indicating the plinth.

“Oh, you mean when the leaves start to fall, I suppose?” quipped his fellow.

“That’s never regulation British weaponry!” shouted John, distressed at the statue’s shield in its left hand and its short sword raised in its right. “Nor regulation armour… _Armour?_ What the –”

“That’s never Wellington’s body!” came a loud female cry from the crowd, which turned as one to stare. “It’s a young boy, for one thing!” she added hurriedly.

“And he didn’t look like that when he _was_ a young boy!” added another female voice, this one older.

“It’s mythological. Or metaphorical,” a male voice quacked into the momentary silence.

“It’s a copy, is what it is,” Sherlock sneered. “Of one of the fourth-century Horse Tamers statues at Monte Cavallo in Rome.”

“Good sir! Did you avail yourself of the lithe form of a young Roman boy just ripening into manhood?” Lord Byron demanded of the now-blubbing artist he still hoisted aloft.

“Oh, oh, like you never have!” cried a satirist.

It was about then that his lordship dropped the frightened sculptor to the ground and turned on his new target. Once a Blood – or Bruiser – always a Blood, or Bruiser, mused Lestrade, wading into the fray, business end of his tipstaff first. And if he accidentally on purpose landed a blow or two on the mad, bad, cove, well, who was to know.


	3. Chapter Three

“Well it proves one thing, I suppose,” mused Sherlock, watching the last stragglers depart, ‘helped’ on their way by the militia. Lestrade watched a whipper-snapper on the edge of the revellers watching him. “That His Grace doesn’t seem to have any qualms about the part he played in the Napoleonic Wars. He displayed no adverse reaction to the speeches or the reading of the inscription which mentions the battles fought.”

“He stood strong and tall. Proud and noble,” said John dreamily. He shivered, coming back to Earth. “It wasn’t really feasible.”

“It was your idea,” Sherlock reminded him.

“Well I didn’t exactly mean it like that. As in war _tout court_ ,” John blustered, “I sort of meant that perhaps he’s developed a trauma, a reaction to, well, Napoleon! Yes, that’s it. He’s being driven mad by that Corsican devil and can’t bear anything to do with him!”

“Old Nosey, not want anything to do Bonaparte?” Piers joined them, almost choking on the hunk of street-vendor roast-meat he was stuffing into his mouth at the same time. “With the amount of Napoleana he collects? Why, Apsley House is crammed full of it.”

“As crammed as your maw is with that dubious mutton?” Sherlock queried. “Do you not partake of dinner these days? Is it no longer fashionable?”

“Oh Cuz! That’s monstrous harsh,” came in a be-gravy-ed, morsel-spitting protest. “You know my lodgings don’t provide such a thing.”

Sherlock shook his head in mock-sorrow. “Still, location, location, location, and all that. Piccadilly’s the new Mayfair…in some ways. And I’m given to understand it’s the latest cry to live above shop premises.”

“ _Sherlock,_ ” Lestrade warned the smirker. He narrowed his eyes – was that street Arab of earlier creeping towards them?

“Of course, the majority of those dandy bachelors live in graceful apartments with carriage-height balconies above the colonnaded arcades in the newly laid-out shopping streets, do they not. Above the tailors, in Jermyn Street, for instance. Or the winemakers, along York’s Street. Whereas you –”

“Have cramped rooms above a mad barber’s down a narrow passage between two said elegant streets. Yes; I know,” Piers answered his cousin, his normally confused eyes taking on a sad sheen and his crooked teeth a despondent gleam. “ _Now_ ,” he added, even more sadly. “I _thought_ the rent was a bargain.”

“Still, you’re handy for the tavern along that alley,” Lestrade said, clapping Piers on the back in consolation and elbowing the wicked viscount in remonstrance. “The Red Lion, isn’t it?”

“And the Black Lion. And the Golden Lion. Mind you, I never go to the Old Lion,” Piers informed them. “It’s a little rough. Become a drinking place for sailors who’ve been cashiered from the navy. Oh yes. By the end of the night that watering hole is simply awash in discharged seamen.”

As soon often happened, a silence greeted Piers’s information.

“So, rough _and_ ready,” Sherlock commented, eventually. “In fact, ready for anything, by the sound of it.”

“Maybe if you could see to the increasing of his allowance, after turfing him out, he wouldn’t have to dwell in such a sorry, scaly place?” Lestrade queried sotto voce of Sherlock, not for the first time. Sherlock’s protests that no one, Lestrade included, could live with that bird-witted, bottle-headed _coglione_ , made them miss a little of Piers’s and John’s exchange.

“They’re all housed there.” John indicated the huge white house, Apsley House, just north of the gates. “He received so many, from all over Europe and even beyond, you know, in recognition of his valour.”

“Honours?” Lestrade queried.

John nodded. “And medals and titles. Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Black Eagle from Prussia. Oh, and the Red Eagle.”

“And the Golden Eagle?” Sherlock asked Piers, who nodded, choking on the last of his supper, his eyes watering.

“And Spain made him Knight of the Golden Fleece.”

Lestrade watched Sherlock twitch back a smile.

“Knight of the Order of the White Elephant, in Denmark,” Piers added.

Sherlock turned quickly away.

“Knight of the Order of the Invisible Holy Ghost from France. That’s never been seen before.”

Sherlock’s shoulders shook.

“I must admit I’d be curious to see them,” John added, surprising Lestrade, who recalled John’s diffidence of earlier. Piers stared at John too.

“Hmm. Like ruling a line under accounts in a ledger,” Sherlock said in an undertone. He looked at Apsley House, then at John, his head on one side. “I’m sure it can be arranged.” His smile was…alarming as he thumbed open a leather wallet from his pocket and rows of slim metal implements glinted in the dying light. _Lockpicks._

“Sherlock, _no_.” Lestrade stopped walking and folded his arms.

“Oh, Fine.” Sherlock shook off his irritation in shaking free several squares of pastecard from under the picks. _Earl Holmes_ , Lestrade read on one boasting a coat of arms. _Lord Holmes_ , he saw on another, proud with embossed lettering. Little shaver helped himself to his family’s calling cards, did he. _Archduke de_ – Lestrade managed to read on another, this bearing an engraved ornament, before Sherlock walked on. The little shuffler evidently helped himself to any visiting cards left for his family, too.

“Sir!” The peeping voice came from behind Lestrade, as did the tug on his coat, and he span around to see the ragged street urchin he’d observed earlier. “Begging yours, sir. Please.” This last was a request to Lestrade to take the small white card that the young kid held by one – now grimy – corner. “I’m to give it to you in private, see.”

“So you waited until I was alone.”

Piers and John had walked on with Sherlock, whom Lestrade had no doubt would be turning around any second now and striding back, dragging his companions with him.

“Yes, sir,” the scrub replied simply, pushing the small card towards Lestrade, who had no choice but to relieve the ragamuffin of it. The boy shot off, presumably to collect his payment.

Curious, Lestrade turned the card over…to see a small line drawing occupying its centre. It had a shield in the middle, a helmet from a suit of armour at the top, a lion on the right, and what was that on the left, a horse? With a… Oh, it was a unicorn! Two words were printed underneath as if in a ribbon. ‘“ _Sans changer,_ ”’ Lestrade read, puzzled. He shifted the card into his other hand, the action making him aware of the size, then the use of such pieces of pastecard. He’d just been looking at a selection, held by Sherlock! In moving the card, Lestrade’s fingers revealed the name it boasted. Huh. For a calling card, it bore no direction and just a single surname. But he supposed that was all you’d need, in that position. If you were –

“Musgrave!” Sherlock, accompanied by John and Piers was there, bending over the rectangle, his finger tracing the letters that made up the name.

“Indeed!” came from behind Lestrade, just as a hand clapped down on his shoulder and judging by John’s exclamation, his too, a fine-boned but strong hand wielded by the tall, slim figure who had inserted himself between them. “Who else?” the deep, cultured tones continued, just before their owner initiated a flurry of backslapping and hearty greetings – of him, John and Piers. The man they still called Lord Musgrave, eschewing as he did the far, far more elevated title and claim he’d a birth right too, was careful not to paw at Sherlock, limiting himself to shaking his hand. He was…decent, Lestrade knew, grinning as Aesc Musgrave chided Sherlock for the stamp duty he’d neglected to pay for the entry in the parish register Aesc had made…when he’d officiated at their wedding.

“So you decided to collect it in person?” Lestrade was still smiling. Something about his lordship made the corners of your mouth turn up. It wasn’t just his long, mobile lips, framed by his close-cut russetty moustache and chin-beard, lips more often than not curled into a wide smile, revealing his many white teeth. It was more than his lively eyes, gleaming with curiosity, their far-away blue-grey set to shine by the red-gold of his barely tamed waves of hair. No; it was that air of delight that he lived in, the sense of joyfulness he carried with him, the sheer enjoyment of life that crackled from him. It was contagious. Although, looking closer as Aesc mock-sparred with Piers, then dragged them all to a table outside a tavern just down Park Lane, Lestrade wondered if his lordship wasn’t looking a little careworn?

“Didn’t dare approach you myself!” Aesc informed Lestrade, handing him the wine he was pouring for them all. “Not after that so-very-hurtful cut indirect you gave me outside the Bow Street Court! And after I’d had myself announced and all. Yes,” he continued, mopping up Piers’s spilled wine for him, “quite thought you might progress to the cut direct!” He gave a mock gasp and held his hand over his heart.

“I’m sorry, your l – Aesc,” Lestrade apologised. “I went barging out, thinking myself made the guy of the situation. Were you there? I really didn’t see you.”

“No matter.” Aesc waved a hand and dabbed at his mouth with his handkerchief. “My fault for sending in my…other card.”

Oh yes, at the court he’d given his name as Langdale Pike. Well, it was his name in a way; his professional name, that of the famous beau monde gossipmonger with his columns in a whole row of magazines and newspapers.

“Oh, were you working?” asked Lestrade, indicating the park at their backs and the last stragglers exiting it.

“Umm.” Aesc swallowed a mouthful of wine. “Now and later. That’s something I wanted to talk to you about.” He was staring into his cup and now swirled its contents around. “I, this job… I think it’s time to pass on the mantle.”

“You’re not wearing a cloak,” Piers pointed out, puzzled.

“I mean, bring my term of tenure to an end.” Now Aesc raised his eyes and met Piers’s. He inclined his cup at him.

“Tenure – yes; I know what it means, Cuz,” Piers forestalled Sherlock. “I know you haven’t always been Langdale Pike, but you mean Langdale Pike hasn’t always been you?”

“Of course not!” Seemed Aesc spoke fluent Piers. Amazing. “Piers, you know how long the columns have been running? How old do you think I am?”

It was evident the confused young man didn’t know the answer to either question, but he raised his hands and started to count on his fingers, showing willing.

“It’s a position. For a young man about Town. Which was fun and lucrative – not that that mattered – when I was younger and carefree but I find myself with too many responsibilities back home to continue,” Aesc explained.

“Oh? Nothing wrong I hope. Your lady mother?” Although she’d looked fine, laying her poor opponent out flat.

“No, thank God,” Aesc replied to Lestrade. “There was an accident on the estate. The magistrate, Sir Peter, was thrown from his horse and suffered an attack of apoplexy. A prolonged attack which has left him bedridden.”

“Seizures?” Sherlock queried. At his friend’s nod, he added, “Catalepsy, then. Not  apoplexy.”

“And loss of reason.”

“So ecstasy, then. His condition’s progressing well. I expect there are paroxysms?” Sherlock continued, turning in surprise as Lestrade elbowed him.

“Must be a worry for Miss Turner,” Lestrade commiserated.

“Yes. Quite. She’s attempting to manage, I hear, and in London to consult his solicitors and so on, but, well…” Aesc scratched at a lock of red-gold hair, brushing it back when it tumbled. “Piers? How would you feel about taking on the torch?”

“No need. It’s not full dusk yet,” came the somewhat inevitable reply. “And I don’t usually mind about being in the dark. Used to it… Wait. Do you mean… No. You don’t mean. You couldn’t really. No. Could you possibly mean –”

“Oh host of heaven! He’s asking if you want the job!” Sherlock exploded.

Then they could hardly be heard over Piers’s howl-like exclamations and his slapping the table top and the breaking of the bottle and cups on it.

“Lucrative, he said? That’ll mean you can leave your accommodations above the mad barber shop down that dingy alley,” Lestrade pointed out to the now jumping up and down young man.

“Accommodation, you say? Ah yes. I almost forgot. Catch. Keys to the set of servanted rooms at the Albany that go with the job. Well, you’ll need to be –”

“In Dandy paradise! In Beaux heaven!” Surprisingly the yelp came from John. Even more surprisingly he’d intercepted the keys with one swift stretch of his left hand

“In the heart of the _Ton_ , I was going to say, but yes, I suppose?” Aesc continued, looking from the pale, quivering John to the puce-faced, spluttering and shaking Piers, then at Sherlock. After a moment, John relinquished the keys. Slowly. “I say, John. I wonder if you could spare young Piers a moment here and there of your busy time, with you being a seasoned writer and –”

“Give it up,” Sherlock advised Aesc. The shrewd look he gave his friend announced he didn’t believe that the chambers at the capital’s most fashionable address were paid for by any newspaper or magazine. Lestrade didn’t believe it either, but would say nothing. “Is Byron still a resident of London’s most prestigious bachelor apartments?”

His sly look was for Lestrade now and he trapped between both of his the foot Lestrade extended underneath the table to deliver a kick.

“Oh, Cuz!” Piers fell on Sherlock in rapture. “Imagine me –”

“Employed? I never thought it possible,” Sherlock admitted. “But I suppose it makes sense. You’ve suckled all your alma mater had to give and so bid adieu to the halls of ivy…”

“You give it up,” Aesc advised as Sherlock trailed off at Pier’s evident confusion. “Oh, one proviso, little cuz – can you start now? This minute? The Duke of Wellington’s being dined by the Regent and several royal dukes at Hampton Court on behalf of a grateful nation etcetera, etcetera. And Mrs Fitzherbert, Princess Caroline and Marchioness Conyngham should be in attendance. Yes, the secret wife, the detested wife and the current mistress. Should be a humdinger… Can you attend and write an account? My, I mean the secretary will take care of delivering it to – ” He was forced to stop by Piers’s high-pitched cheeping.

“Oh Sire! Liege, I mean! Of course I can! And I will!”

Aesc clutched as many of the non-broken cups as he could as Piers’s excited dancing on the spot shook the table.

“And I have it all worked out, upon this very instant! All I need is a bottle of chloroform, a burly, broad-shouldered footman and a willing, nimble-fingered valet!”

“Erm…” Aesc stared at Piers.

“To help me strip the unconscious footman!”

“Piers,” Lestrade tried.

“So I can exchange clothes with him!” Piers shouted in explanation. “When I infiltrate the dinner!”

“Piers, you can’t! There’s no apothecary open at this time!” exclaimed John. A little maliciously, Lestrade felt.

“Oh! I’ll have to rob one first!” Piers cried over his shoulder, rushing off.

“Piers – ” Aesc tried to no avail to intercept him as he rushed back to set off the other way. “I wish he’d let me give him the invitation. It would have been much easier,” he commented into the stunned silence, indicating the envelope. “And the cards.” He fingered the slim silver case of visiting cards. 

Which reminded Lestrade. “If you needed to see Piers, why come to Bow Street?” he enquired. 

“Oh, I wanted you too, good sir. To apprise you of what I witnessed. In case you needed the report, even though they’ll be no official action taken, of course. But in case anyone else was blamed? I wouldn’t wish for that, and I know you wouldn’t.” 

Lestrade wondered if, in giving Piers his identity, Aesc had sadly taken on Piers’s. Sherlock leant forward. 

“What did the Duke of Wellington do? That gave your mother the strange delusion she’s labouring under? No – don’t tell me. He destroyed a likeness of himself, yes?” 

“Yes,” Aesc confirmed.

“Because he’s developed some overwhelming aversion to Napoleon and it’s splintering his mind!” John gabbled. “But we need to see his house, yonder, to see if he’s destroyed any and all reminder of his battles, any memento of the struggle which has overpowered him.” 

“Really?” Aesc looked at the large white neo-Classical building. “Well, knowing she wasn’t the cause would alleviate my mother’s preoccupation.” He ignored Sherlock’s muttered, “If she hasn’t forgotten about it already.” “So, we go?” He stood. 

“And how will we get in? And don’t mention drugging and stripping a manservant,” Lestrade begged, colouring a little as a couple, walking past, turned and stared at him. 

“We knock and present our compliments, because we wish to pay our respects, felicitate the country’s saviour!” Aesc clapped him on the back. “We’ll enter so I can leave my card in person.” 

_ How the other half live. _ Lestrade, imagining a Friday-faced butler stepping back and bowing for a lord of the realm, only wished he could gain entrance to properties he needed egress to so easily. Couldn’t imagine himself presenting a card and people standing back from an open portal for him or his officers. As if. He almost missed Aesc declaring he’d even enter the ducal study, to pen a letter regretting missing His Grace, so they could all look around.

And it went off almost exactly as he’d envisioned, only a footman answered their knock, showing them into the massive marble hall to be received by the doleful-looking butler, His Grace being regretfully out. 

“He doesn’t seem frightened of Napoleon, if that statue’s anything to judge by,” Aesc observed, walking to the nude colossus at the bottom of the gracefully curving stairwell. “It’s the famous eleven-foot statue Napoleon had commissioned of himself as Mars, God of War.” 

“Not frightened, no,” agreed Sherlock, whose long-legged stride had taken him thither in a trice too. “Contemptuous, if anything.” 

“What, because he’s using it as a coat rack?” Lestrade asked, peering up at the cloaks draped over the upraised left arm holding a spear. 

“That and…a hat stand,” Sherlock replied. 

“You don’t mean…” John hurried over and squinted…a lot lower down. “Phew. It’s just another fig leaf.” 

“The hat’s on the hand?” Sherlock indicated the outstretched right hand, presumably holding something classical and allegorical, underneath the military tricorne tossed onto it. “Hmm. I see fig leaves are becoming a theme in this case.” 

“Soon have a whole garden full, if we look around. I bet,” commented Lestrade, raking the massive statue with his gaze. He gave a snort as he followed the others being ushered somewhere by the butler. “Eleven foot? Who does he think he’s fooling. He’s –” 

He broke off at the loud clang, followed by a loud voice, one getting louder as it got nearer until a dark-haired man in a white apron erupted from a door back down the hallway, throwing his white hat to the floor and jumping up and down on it. 

“Ahem?” came in a pointed cough from Sherlock, making Lestrade realise he’d shoved Sherlock behind him, trapping him against the wall. 

Lestrade’s whispered, “Sorry,” went unheard under the butler’s mournful voice and skilful piloting of them along a different corridor, leaving the temperamental cook haranguing kitchen staff instead of his hat. 

“You must forgive the chef, sirs. Foreign and thus excitable,” the solemn butler finished, showing them into the study. 

“Not just foreign. French!” Lestrade exclaimed. 

“And not just any French cook. Did you see? That was Dunand!” Aesc said. 

“Napoleon’s cook? Well, not all His Grace has…taken over,” John observed, indicating two miniatures, at the end of a row. “If they’re who I think they are.” 

“Miss Josephina Grassini, the celebrated Italian classical vocalist, sirs,” intoned the gloomy butler, making them jump. “A bird of passage here since His Grace pushed forty thousand francs down her cleavage.” 

“In notes, one hopes?” Sherlock enquired. 

“And Miss Josephine Weimer, an actress, of sorts. His Grace’s convenient,” the servant finished, with a dejected shake of his head. “You might remember Mr Gilray’s cartoon of her invigilating a race between the Iron Duke and the  _ Petit Corporal _ , and saying that  _ Monsieur le Duc _ had greater stamina.”

It didn’t need the servant’s explanation or John’s run-mad-looking bulging of his eyes from a portrait of Bonaparte to one of the duke to tell Lestrade these women were formerly Boney’s bits of muslin that Old Nosey had taken on. “And who’s that?” he enquired, pointing to the half-finished-looking portrait of the woman on the easel. 

“Miss Pauline Borghese. The former Emperor Napoleon’s sister,” they were informed. 

“Be nice when it’s finished, when the clothes are painted on, I suppose,” remarked Lestrade, who’d always assumed sitters’ garments were drawn along with the sitter. What did he know. 

“It…is finished, sir,” came the depressed-sounding reply. 

The butler’s disconsolate mood was catching – Lestrade found little joy in their tour of well, Europe, really, in the form of paintings from the Dutch school, the German school, the Italian school and the Spanish and the gifts from continental rulers, including the crystal candelabra from Russia, the porcelain dinner service from Prussia, the gold cutlery from Portugal and the silver salvers from Saxony. 

“All he needs is a ceremonial table and chairs now to have everything for a dinner party,” Lestrade murmured to Sherlock. Sherlock snorted. 

“Thanks, my man.” Aesc took their leave of the butler, who gave a sad, slow headshake at their departure.

“Yes, fine. I concede,” burst from John. “His Grace doesn’t seem to be consumed with fear of Bonaparte. If he has indeed run mad, although he didn’t seem to have windmills in his attic earlier this evening if you ask me, it isn’t that.” 

Lestrade was glad they weren’t paying Dr Watson for that medical opinion. Then a thought struck him. “Hang on. We keep hearing the duke’s mad, smashing up stuff and so on. Well, didn’t seem to me a lot of crashing and bashing had gone on there. Looked spick and span to me.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. 

“Hmm. Quite. Aesc, what were you talking about earlier? The matter you’d gone to see Inspector Lestrade about?” Sherlock paused a moment, just long enough for Lestrade to get out his notebook. He followed with his surgery-sharp gaze as Lestrade’s tongue tip wetted the end of his pencil, and Lestrade hoped he was the only one close enough to Sherlock to see the sudden silver gleam in his eye. Lestrade busied himself with his pages. 

“Oh, the scene at Christie’s?” 

“Christie being…” Lestrade was scribbling, and startled, then grateful when long, deceptively delicate fingers plucked book and pencil from his hands to play secretary for him. 

“Christie’s auction rooms,” Aesc answered. “This auction was fine and decorative arts.” 

“And you covered that, for your column?” Lestrade was puzzled. 

“Oh, indeed. The higher echelon goes there, to bid and see and be seen.” 

“And the not always so high. The mushrooms, parvenus and nabobs are in force even there now,” John added, making Sherlock sigh. 

“I do wish you wouldn’t hang around The Woman so much and take down her words verbatim for your tawd – tall tales, John,” he lamented. “And I thought those classes clamoured for the mass-produced goods sold in those shops that more resemble small theatres nowadays, with the merchandise on display and stools set out for patrons to gaze upon it.” His lip curled. 

“Well, this was a charity auction. With the money going to the Foundling Hospital,” Aesc continued. “So the great and the good were attending.” 

“And the lewd and the low, using the occasion to fraternise and flirt, sitting cheek by jowl on those wooden benches and hiding behind those oversized catalogues!” 

“John…” Sherlock gave up and shook his head. No doubt they’d be reading about it soon enough. “Aesc, facts?” 

“Well, it was a bust of Wellington, the lot in question. And what’s strange is when the winning bid was accepted and the bidder beckoned forward to settle up, it turned out to be –” 

“Wellington himself,” said Sherlock and Lestrade in unison. “And His Grace contrived to drop the bust, I presume?” Sherlock added. 

“Nudged it from the plinth. Got his elbow to it. I saw,” Aesc nodded. “The old cove James Christie himself was there of course, the occasion being what it was, and he was angry. Blamed the auctioneer. The auctioneer railed at the footmen for their clumsiness. They protested their innocence and so on, but smashed it was. Wellington even made it worse, trying to help. But that’s not all. After he’d left, another lot came up. A –” 

“Second bust.” Sherlock didn’t glance up from his note taking. 

“If you know all this, why make me sing for my supper?” Aesc commented, steering them into the tavern. 

“Do you know all this?” Lestrade questioned, eyeing his love. “So who bid on the second bust then?” 

“You should know,” came the retort. Sherlock turned back a few pages and showed Lestrade his own writing, the notes he’d made earlier that day. That afternoon. “At Vauxhall.” 

“Jeffreys?” Lestrade recalled the sallow, thin-faced owner of the pleasure gardens. “Oh, a centrepiece for the battle scene re-enactment! Yes, it was –” 

‘“An imposing, life-size white marble bust representing the famous soldier Arthur, Duke of Wellington,”’ Sherlock quoted. ‘“The only thing destroyed although all the boxes showed signs of having been rifled through.”’ 

“Because that was all His Grace wanted. He got word there’d been another sold and so went after it. Well well.” Aesc broke off to bespeak them all the house supper. “Why, Sherlock?” 

“I don’t know,” Sherlock admitted. “Yet,” he added, jumping to his feet and downing his glass of wine. “We need to start by finding out the provenance of those sculptures. I take it Old Christie’s son, James the younger, was there? He’s in town?” As Aesc, bewildered, nodded, Sherlock knocked back a second glass, this one happening to be Lestrade’s. He slopped a third of it on his shirt in his haste.  _ Charming. _ “Don’t wait up!” Sherlock cried, striding off. 

“I won’t,” Lestrade muttered. A lie he knew. He’d be waiting. Especially if Sherlock was planning some larks or sprees out on the town with this here young man James, presumably some young buck of Sherlock’s age and acquaintance, and background. Wait? He’d half a mind to follow the coxcomb. But staring after him, he caught the look Sherlock turned and threw back at him. A long look that made things, everything, really, all right with their world. Heartened, Lestrade applied himself to his stew and chop supper and resolved to wait.

 

He wasn’t waiting  _ up _ though. No, ’course not. Just, all that report writing His Highness had ducked out of had to be done and that evening was as good a time as any and better than most, as the saying went. Better to sit up late at the desk in the living room. Even if he did fall asleep, which he doubted. Only resting his eyes, he was, to be jolted fully alert by the loud clip-clopping of horses’ hooves below in the street, then the slamming of a carriage door, followed by a noisy and jocular leave-taking from said  carriage. Not Sherlock’s usual Hansom, thought Lestrade, resolutely not peeking out, not even at the series of failed attempts to insert a key into the street door, all of which were met with guffaws and jokes from whoever was still in the carriage and who eventually drove off, still cackling and shouting.

Lestrade smiled at the footsteps ascending the stairs. He’d be having a bit of ammunition to use against His Viscountship, should he ever need. Then came a loud wooden thump and a blue streak of cursing. Well, well. More ammo to stockpile. He crossed to kindly open the door for the floor-eating Sherlock, and stood folded-armed against the jamb. 

“Yes, I had a good evening,” came back, in a smooth baritone. “In the sense of productive. And before you crow, I’m not even half-seas over. Assume that and  _ you’ll _ be eating crow.” 

“Oh?” Lestrade tried not to smirk at the downed figure as he stretched out his hand to assist him. 

“It’s Newton’s fault. And not as in gravity.” Folding his legs under him to rise unaided, Sherlock forestalled any witticism that Lestrade might have attempted. 

“Sir Isaac Newton.” Lestrade shook his head at the sinuous cream and chocolate elegance of the Siamese feline twined luxuriously around Sherlock’s neck.  “Never did like giving beasts human names,” Lestrade commented, adding, “Especially beasts who should be earning their keep out in the stables catching mice, not doing service indoors as neck warmers.” 

As Sherlock leant forward to him, Lestrade held out a protesting hand. “Oh no. I’m not greeting you while you’re draped in something that smells of fish – both ends,” he declared, eyeing the pair. Slim, sleek, slender-limbed, with odd-coloured and mysterious slanted eyes taking in every blessed thing in the surroundings, memorising everything he could use to his advantage: and the other had twitching whiskers and a whisking tail. You couldn’t tell them apart else, Lestrade sometimes felt, shrugging off the uncanny thought of supernatural beings and their animal familiars. 

“Hmm.” Sherlock assessed and crossed the room to deposit  Sir Isaac Newton in front of the fireplace. The creature didn’t bother wasting breath on a hiss or a meow, just slow-blinked at Lestrade, his usurper, and stalked out. Lestrade slammed the door after him, turning to find Sherlock cataloguing the room, no doubt seeing how long Lestrade had stayed up…and how little work he’d got through. 

“And? Your evening? Drunken carousin’ with your dandy five-bottle-men chums? Eyeing the barques of frailty and sayin’ how much you’d like to taste the wares of their apple dumplin’ shops?” 

“Lestrade.” Sherlock closed his eyes as he dropped into his chair. “I pray you wouldn’t read the good doctor’s literary…efforts. You obviously devour them, if you can quote his deathless prose verbatim like that. Or wait. Was that supposed to be your impersonation of little cuz Piers?” 

“Can’t be that off the mark, if you recognise it.” Lestrade grinned too, delighting in Sherlock’s smile. “Course, your acting’s good enough for Drury Lane. Shaming drunk, were you?” Mrs Hudson and Molly would be sighing over the stain left by the wine Sherlock had spilled on his coat earlier. It still smelt pungently. 

“Cheap rotgut,” Sherlock sighed, divining Lestrade’s thoughts. “Aesc has no refinement to his palate, no discrimination in the establishments he patronises.” 

“He just likes a full cup and a hearty plate.” Lestrade could and did sympathise with his lordship and had appreciated the impromptu tavern supper. He thought as well Aesc had needed to offload about his worries. “So you convinced this James the junior you were high in the altitudes and looking for some kindred choice spirit to have a rig with.” 

“Exactly. Why, you should consider joining the Bow Street R – aaaag!” The last exclamation was Sherlock almost failing to catch the cushion Lestrade hurled at his face. “Yes, I ‘bumped’ into the young James leaving Christie’s when I was ambling along, disgruntled at having being called to Holmes House for a pi-jaw and having gone for a good few bumpers after, to take the taste away.”

“I see.” Lestrade nodded as he dropped into his matching chair. “And you encouraged him to vent his spleen about his family circumstances too, no doubt. Rail against old man Christie and the auction house? Otherwise known as pumping the young cove like a greased spigot for information.” 

“Indeed. And I discovered the origins of the marble busts in question. They were made in Belgium.” 

“Oh?” Lestrade hadn’t been expecting that. He frowned as Sherlock coughed, then rubbed his throat. It all became clear when his laziness flicked his gaze towards the jug of drinking chocolate left warming in the hearth. A rolling-eyed Lestrade got up to serve him, finding Sherlock had taken up residence in his chair, making Lestrade squash up against him to sit. No hardship. “Belgium, you say?” 

“Brussels, more precisely and rue de la Blanchisserie, more precisely still. On June 16.” 

“The Battle of Quatre Bras?” Lestrade questioned. “Is there a connection? Wellington was there then, of course.” 

“The busts were sculpted and cast on the sixteenth in one unbroken session, some patriotic gesture or other, and were based on a sketch made the evening before. The fifteenth. At some ball given by the Duchess –” 

“Of Richmond!” came in hushed tones from the other door. John. Not Doctor Watson or Captain Watson, but John Watson, the Penny Shocker, as Sherlock dubbed him. “The Duchess of Richmond’s ball, known as the most famous ball in history! Her husband, Charles Lennox, 4th Duke of Richmond, was in command of a reserve force in Brussels, protecting the city in case  Bonaparte invaded. And every officer high in Wellington’s army attended the ball, along with ambassadors, generals and aristocrats and dashing young officers and His Royal Highness, the Prince of Orange.” 

“John.” Sherlock narrowed his eyes at him, his gaze sweeping down to see if the doctor’s fingers held a pencil or pen. “Why do I get the feeling –” 

“Hang about. A ball? A ruddy ball? On the eve of the battle? I know you said His Grace was the best waltzer in Europe, John, but that seems –” 

“It was part of his strategy! Not just the morale-building for his commanders, but using the brilliant occasion, the glittering palace with rose-trellised wallpaper, rich tent-like draperies and hangings in the royal colours of crimson, gold and black as a cover,” John explained, joining them in the unoccupied chair. Lestrade held out a cup of chocolate, but John ignored it, lost among the tinkling of crystal chandeliers and the rustle of silk dresses. 

“Orders had still to be distributed among officers in Brussels and personal interviews held. Why not under the convenient camouflage and at the ready-made rendezvous of a ball? With the commanding officers slipping away quietly as the strains of music poured through the open windows into the warm streets and over the thronged carriages...” 

“I think he’s planning an entire series,” Sherlock murmured in Lestrade’s ear as John waxed poetic. “Following the adventures of each vacuous young aristocrat who found love with a simpering maiden upon this glittering evening then dashed off to lead a cavalry charge under cannon fire on the battlefield.”


	4. Chapter Four

“Hold on.” John halted himself. “How was it the sculptures were made at the duchess’s mansion?”

“They weren’t, of course. They were made in a studio along the same street. Seems the idea took hold with an artist and the sculptor Edward Hedge Ballantyne being at the ball, so those still standing by dawn, people, no doubt the flower of British society in Brussels, swept along to the studio and commandeered it.” Sherlock’s huge yawn was perhaps a product of his tiredness, but nevertheless managed to perfectly convey his opinion of the occasion he described.

“Oh.”

“What.” Sherlock stood, squeezing himself free of their chair, to peer down at John. “Better get it out before you erupt like a volcano.”

“Somethingelse happenedat thatball!” John burst out.

“Oh let me guess. Some dewy-eyed innocent seduced and abandoned in the loggia?” Sherlock scorned.

“Now who’s been reading at the circulating library?” Lestrade asked. The answer was probably Mrs Hudson, with Sherlock doubtless skimming through the triple-decker novels their housekeeper brought home from Hookham’s, a sneer dripping from his lips.

“Well, probably.” John was deflating. “But Lady Dalrymple-Hamilton was robbed! Oh yes, it’s true. It’s being kept hush-hush to protect her honour but she was relieved of the famous Dalrymple-Hamilton pearl choker while ‘dancing’…with a man _other than her aged husband_ , if you know what I mean.”

“We always know what you mean, John,” Sherlock sighed. “So what happened to the jewels?”

“No one knows. They couldn’t very well search all the dashing young officers, could they. But the pearls haven’t come up for sale anywhere, either in a string or singly.” John nodded, pursed-lipped.

“Well, it would be difficult to get them out of Belgium, back to England, what with the war, and the uncertainty,” Lestrade reasoned.

“Not…necessarily.”

“What, love?” Lestrade asked the suddenly still Sherlock.

“Wouldn’t it difficult…if they were concealed inside something by the thief. The thief who perhaps persuaded this something to be created, say, for that very purpose. A something…that was to be shipped back to London.”

“Something like…busts of His Grace, the Duke of Wellington, you mean?” Lestrade reckoned this mind reading was starting to go both ways. About time.

“Oooh, oooh, and Wellington found out one of his young officers was dishonourable and determined to  maintain Lady Dalrymple-Hamilton’s reputation and right the wrong himself!” John exclaimed. “That would be just like him. So noble. So he tried to find the jewels…except he didn’t. Not at the auction house or at the pleasure gardens.” He blinked rapidly at all the loose ends in the fantastic plot he was weaving.

“Wouldn’t be likely. Be a slim chance to find what he sought in those busts,” Sherlock commented, fanning his jacket tails out in front of the fire.

“How come?”

“Because,” Sherlock answered Lestrade, “There weren't just two. There were in fact six. A hexad of marble heads. Half a dozen busts. Six Wellingtons, to boot.”

“Lamb.” Lestrade winced at the appalling pun, and Sherlock made the slightest moue of apology. “You could’ve gone with three pairs of Wellingtons.”

Sherlock twirled away in a snit as John made noises of agreement.

“Here.” Lestrade sacrificed the last of the drinking chocolate to the discomforted Sherlock, adding a slug of brandy to help it down. The last of the brandy too, he noted. So unless Sherlock had further dealings with free-traders, which Lestrade wasn’t prepared to countenance… “So, two down, then,” Lestrade remarked. “Four more chances. But where are those four statues?”

“They could be anywhere, you know,” John threw in. “If they were seized on as fashionable and desirable, the latest thing to acquire. You know, even people far outside London want all the ultimate things now, what with shops having picture papers of their wares and all the magazines describing the ton’s collections and furnishings.”

“All of which you devour whole for your writings,” Sherlock sniped, not really under his breath.

“No, well, yes, I do read a lot for research, yes,” John admitted, standing and drawing his overlong dressing-robe tightly to him, trying to look down his nose. “But a lot of my studying is done first-hand, you know. I’m out and about, mingling, observing, sampling…from the most delightful ballroom to the most desperate bar rooms. You can’t have forgotten how we met.”

“No, of course not. Particularly not when it’s available from each penny kiosk, in printed form, errors  and all!” Sherlock crowed.

“That’s not my fault! So much goes wrong during the typographical process. Duplication, omission, transposition, substitution...” John spluttered.

“All of which have _s.e.s_ printed after them!” cried Sherlock. At John’s puzzled frown, Sherlock’s face tightened into a smirk, and Lestrade heart sank. “Oh John, John, John. _Really._ Did you think they were the initials of the printer, or the printer’s devil? They stand for _sic erat scriptum_. Latin for thus was it written. Meaning – ”

“Sherlock,” Lestrade cautioned, letting his tone darken with warning. He’d had a long enough day as it was. Didn’t want it ending with Doctor Watson, who presumably had had to learn enough Latin for his doctoring, to figure the phrase out and dissolve into floods of tears and be needing hankies and smelling salts. After searching Lestrade’s face, Sherlock subsided. John, however, drawing himself up to his full height, best he could, anyway, bristled.

“Well, be that as it may –”

“It is,” came in a Sherlockian mutter, one which ended in a gasp owing to the Public Officer elbow in his side.

“I have sufficient contacts among all walks of life to discover the information we need,” announced John, turning on his heel, then spinning back again with more to add. “And plenty of favours to call in from my cohorts, my acquaintances, both high society and lower lives, to garner said information. Yes, leave it with me and I’ll have discovered what we need by sundown on the morrow.”

And with that he twirled out, his dramatic exit only hampered by the hem of his robe catching on the door hinge, making him stumble and then knock over the end table in the corridor as he righted himself. A clipped “Damn,” floated back to them.

“Did you hear that?” Sherlock was spitting like his Siamese cat friend. “ _My contacts. Call in favours. Get the information we need..._ Who does he think he is?”

“I can’t imagine,” Lestrade replied, eyeing the peeved viscount, then trying to catch a handful of jacket as Sherlock sprang up. “Hey! Where –”

“The streets. Put some men on it, people who owe me, and get the Irregulars on it too. I’ll have the information by sun-up.” Sherlock slammed down his cup with a tonk and leapt to the door, stopping at a quiet, “Ahem,” at his back.

“Ah. Yes.” And the jack-in-a-box sprang back and grabbed Lestrade by his lapels, to haul him up into a brief but thorough kiss. “Really don’t wait up,” he murmured, his lips slanting up in a one-sided smile and still nuzzling Lestrade’s as he pulled free. “Be a busy day tomorrow.”

“They all are!” riposted Lestrade to his viscountship’s disappearing rear. “With you!”

“Back by sun-up,” he mimicked in a tired mumble as he stumbled off to bed. “Busy tomorrrr-ow” – he yawned, tumbling under the covers – “as weee’rrre off t –”

 

“Brighton!”

Lestrade jack-knifed up in bed at the announcement, enunciated as crisply and loudly as a travelling case clicking shut. Oh wait – that was a travelling case being clicked shut, as well, what felt like seconds after Lestrade’s head had touched the pillow, although the light outside showed it was dawn.

“Brighthelmstone?” With that long, sleepy slobber-snore reply to his partner, Lestrade slid back down again. He was old enough to call the seaside resort by its former and still official name.

“Brighton!” Sherlock repeated, this time making it an unmistakable demand, or rather command, the way his long fingers plucked the bedclothes from Lestrade.

“Gerroff!” Lestrade managed, clutching and grabbing at the sliding warmth and…vanishing modesty. “Molly? Billy? What –”

He didn’t bother to finish his question. Didn’t need to, not when the former was folding and packing and the latter fetching and carrying. “Brighton,” he answered, resigned, but not acquiescent enough to let their mostly stableboy sometimes houseboy try and dress him where he lay, despite Sherlock’s directions. There was only so much time that could be saved, and impatient viscountly dancing about on the spot didn’t speed anything along.

“Brighton,” Lestrade said as the carriage clattered its way out of London. “Fifty-eight miles. As the crow flies. Pity we’re not crows. Pity…you’re such a blasted cat!”

Because, curled up in the corner, his greatcoat over him, Sherlock was asleep. Well, the carriage was comfortable, Lestrade supposed, and its swaying soothing. Couldn’t really blame Sherlock for catching up on his rest. Lestrade took the blanket from its cover and draped it over his partner. Partner in whatever crime this was going to be, he thought, drifting off to the land of nod himself, and wandering in and out, as the coachman and ostler changed horses. He had a few days’ worth to catch up on, way he’d been on the hop lately, what with the job and Sherlock.

Sherlock. Do _him_ good to spend  bit of time at the sea, the salt-waves and salt-scent of which were lulling Lestrade into his half-doze. Umm, an interlude while they looked around the beach town for the Wellington bust. Maybe even took in a spot of sea-bathing, p’raps. Yes, good to slip away from the hurly-burly of the capital. Real merry-totter that could be. Right sideshow too, all the goings on, and sights. Ahh, a spell at the waters, where people had their little holiday shacks, calming, soothing, traditional, and –

“What the unholy hell is that?” _Was he still asleep?_ No; his eyes had pinged open and he could still see it. See it large. That…fantastical monstrosity there, on the prom. Massive, too vast to comprehend, and all white and shiny and gleaming and strange… “Turrets? Domes? Minarets? Arches? Some, can’t be, Hindoo palace? Saracen fortress? Mughal mausoleum? _In England?_ ”

“Oh that? Why, that’s Prinny’s modest seaside lodging house. His little retreat by the waters,” drawled Sherlock.

“The…” Lestrade looked from the glazed foreign-white monstrosity to Sherlock and then back to the – “Marine Pavilion? I imagined, from the name…well, not that.” All those cartoons, with His Royal Highness depicted as a massive be-turbaned pasha or maharani, squatting over a hookah (and seeing visions of food in the clouds of smoke), made sense now. The building looked so uninviting, there up from the front. So wrong.

 “Well, don’t suppose it’s any of our concern, that’ll we’ll be so much as setting foot inside it…except…the statue’s there, isn’t?” he finished, resigned again, knowing his Sherlock.

“Need to get in this evening.” Sherlock nodded. “As usual the royal idiot’s hosting a party.”

“Big one too,” Lestrade added. Hence the line of carriages clopping up along the parade, slowing their progress. “And how do you propose we get in? Borrowing some costumes and chloroform off your cousin, is it?”

“Borrow – _of course not_. I have an invitation.” Sherlock took up a sheet of paper from the hinged writing flap set into the carriage door and blew on it.

“Ink still wet on that, I see,” Lestrade observed.

“Not…now.” Sherlock sprinkled fine sand from a tiny shaker onto the page.

“And I notice you didn’t say you were invited.” Lestrade reached out for the rectangle of stiff card on the writing board. “ _Mycroft?”_ He frowned, recalling yesterday, and Sherlock’s lingering at his brother’s desk. “Purloined this then.”

“And a sheet of his writing-paper. Mycroft, unable to attend –”

“What with having his invite stolen –”

“Has sent me in his stead,” Sherlock finished, ignoring Lestrade’s interruption and sealing the forged letter. “What?” he enquired, affronted as Lestrade chortled.

“Nothing, pet. Just imagining you without the…penmanship, shall we say, and having to dress up and pass yourself off as your brother all night!”

Sherlock gave a huff of laughter too refined to be called a snort. “Not just me. You’re coming too,” he said.

“Hold fast.” Lestrade stretched out a cautious hand to the garment bags on the opposite seat. “There’d better not be a silk frock in here, stolen from that Anthea woman, that you expect me to –” He couldn’t go on, not for chuckling now, but for fear.

“Really, Greg.”

As always, the use of his given name, freely given to and jealously hoarded by Sherlock, arrested Lestrade. A slow smile wanted to make its way across his face, but, suspicious, he looked Sherlock in the eye and held it back. A pull on the fine-weave bags revealed they both contained evening attire. Male evening attire. One set of which was _his_ male attire. His best, knee breeches and all, a suit that had appeared at 221B one day, delivered from Sherlock’s Jermyn Street tailor, with some airy remark dropped by Sherlock about Lestrade needing finery for some case or other Sherlock was taking on – a case that was never mentioned again. Funny that.

“No guising. Just the truth. You’re a Bow Street Runner, accompanying me.” Sherlock spoke slowly, searching Lestrade’s eyes.

“The plain truth.” Lestrade swallowed.

“If it were up to me, I’d live the truth. Plainly,” Sherlock murmured, surprising Lestrade, more so when he brushed Lestrade’s hand with his, making their matching gold rings chime against the other.

“Oh yeah?” The smile Lestrade had been holding back bloomed now, more so when he clasped Sherlock’s hand in both of his, slotting their ring fingers together. “And why’s that then?”

“You know,” came the retort, as Lestrade’d expected, and he held his ground. Waited. “ _Urrrgh!_ Because I, like living with you. Being with you.”

Lestrade raised an eyebrow. “Keep going.”

The inarticulate _grrr_ that followed this did no credit to Sherlock’s expensive schooling. “Because, because, _je t’adore_.” And with that he whirled up and back, to begin unbuttoning his jacket and loosening the fall of his trousers.

“Hey, steady on!” Lestrade cautioned, mindful of the thin walls of the carriage, the proximity of passersby, the…raiment bag Sherlock passed to him, for him to change too. “Oh. Yeah. I see. And you said it wrong. That phrase? Missed out an _N_ , at least.” He pulled his suit free, relishing Sherlock’s frowning brow. “It’s _adorn_. You _adorn_ me,” he clarified, holding the garments aloft in illustration.

A narrow-eyed “Hmm,” came from the viscount. “Steady on? What did you imagine I was doing?”

“Well, I…yeah that!” Lestrade managed, best and all he could with the slim-hipped, fine-legged Sherlock folded himself like a Far East lantern in front of him, flicking each and every one of Lestrade’s buttons from their fastenings as he did so. “Sherlock! We can’t! Shouldn’t. You wouldn’t…”

He could and did, as did Lestrade. Lolling afterwards in satiated heaviness, he saw they were almost at the building. “ _Pavilion_ ,” he huffed. “Not exactly a tent, now, is it? Nor any kind of structure in a park,” he added as they alighted and gave over the carriage to a footman, thinking back to the pleasure gardens with their small wooden open-roofed shelters.

“They told him Carlton House was getting too expensive, so he asked if he could be permitted a modest seaside retreat instead,” one extravagantly accoutred gent was explaining to his party.

Lestrade looked up, and up, open-mouthed at the fantastical white-glazed domes and turrets of the Oriental behemoth. _Modest?_ This?

“Which he then tore down, redesigned, rebuilt and  extended,” continued their impromptu guide. “He’s adding that new dome to celebrate the Battle of Waterloo.”

Lestrade didn’t see what the shiny and rotund cupola had to do with the blood and guts of a desperate battle. The half-finished dome was round and bulbous, reminding him of the bulb of an onion, or some fat plant like –

“Opium.” Sherlock’s fine-boned hand twirled a dismissive gesture at the gleaming edifice. “Not only in physical resemblance but the entire edifice is like some first-time opium-smoker’s dream.”

Lestrade, who’d tracked down the viscount to Limehouse  and a disreputable den on more than one occasion and had him tracked down and dragged out on still another, didn’t bother replying. He did look around at the quieter, “ _Ohhh,_ ” that came as Sherlock peered down at a pair of quaint-looking blue and gold China dragons placed either side of the entrance they were being ushered through. Peered down at…and sniffed at, at whatever incense or perfume was smoking within. “Literally,” murmured Sherlock, kicking a pot to stir its contents and breathe in a massive lungful.

“What did you say?” Lestrade queried, coughing a little as he made his way through the scented clouds.

“I, erm, said oh,  _qilin_. That’ s a pair of _qilin_. Qing dynasty, actually.”

“You seem quite taken with ’em,” Lestrade commented, urging Sherlock forwards, away from the fume-wafting knickknacks. “Delight the eye, do they?”

“One could say it’s heart-pleasing,” muttered Sherlock. “Joyful, even.”

A suspicious Lestrade eyed him narrowly. It felt strange he thought, as the small group of fellow guests they seemed to have joined walked in the enormous entrance, most of them letting loose gasped ooohs and ahhhs like gusts of wind at the sights. The relaxed languor, probably occasioned by their carriage tryst, persisted, not driven away by any expected fish-out-of-water anxiety of being in a royal residence. Even a royal residence redolent with such a heavy, sweet aroma, one that coated the inside of his head and thickened his tongue. “’S’like being just on the right side of a headache, if that makes any sense,” he mumbled.

“More sense than this does,”  remarked Sherlock, passing Lestrade a handkerchief and indicating he should hold it over his nose.

“ _Chinoiserie_ ,” sighed the know-it-all gent.  “Exoticism over classicism.”

“Gone from India to China,” Lestrade translated, to describe the difference between the exterior and the inside, for whom he didn’t know, his eyes dry and too big for his head, somehow. “And it’s inside out.” He meant the living trees and running water, features of the room, along with all the reds and golds and Oriental-looking wallpaper and bamboo and lacquer. Mrs Hudson’d be taking notes. Or samples. He almost missed a portly gent asking a footman if they were being conducted on a tour of the works in progress – His Highness was fond of showing visitors round, Nash’s plans in hand, apparently.

“Is he even here?” sneered Sherlock. Lestrade frowned. A host throw a party and not be there? Was that what these high-and-mighty high-society coves did? But then why bother –

_“Hide and seek?_ ” came in an even more snide Viscountly tone. Lestrade must have missed part of their exchange. “We’re expected to have to find –”

“It’s _cache-cache_ ,” proffered the tiny footman, his white wig slipping in his nervousness. “It’s –”

“Crass-crass, more like,” capped Sherlock, frowning as most of their party set off, laughing and calling out as they darted behind screens and among waving fronds. “And surely, the obsession the man has with foodstuffs, he’d naturally call this game Sardines?”

“Don’t think that’d be possible – doubt anyone else’d fit in a small space with him,” Lestrade said in a whisper, not sure if remarking out loud on the regent’s weight constituted treason or not. Sherlock snorted, then brightened up further as he poked at a small jade and gold ceramic vase in a fireplace, stirring its tenuous puff of sweet smoke into a fat plume. “See you like that _cache_ …pot,” Lestrade continued, inadvertently inhaling a huge breath of the wavering cloud as he bent down to point at the ceramic and make his remark. He found himself grinning too, as wide as his husband.

Maybe it was the influence of the joy-causing plant, or whatever it was Sherlock had called it, because within minutes they were giggling like clerks on a spree as they rushed from room to room, weaving around sophas and pianofortes and hopping over tables and stools as they sought out the hiding prince regent.

“There he is! In battledress!” cried a stout lady, peering down a corridor. “Oh,” came her sigh, as she raced the length of the passage in a deep curtsey, no easy feat. “It’s nothing but a dummy.”

“ _Madam!_ ” hissed Lestrade, mindful of walls having ears and them all being clapped in irons for sedition. “Oh, I see. Yeah.” He poked the brightly uniformed effigy. “Good thing Captain Watson’s not here, eh. He’d have something to say about Prinny having no claim to regimentals, what with him not having seen battle in his life.”

“Oh, I don’t know. He  fights all the time with his wife,” Sherlock countered, sending them both into fits again, and the looks they received from those around were as black as if delivered by chimney sweeps.

They followed a chorus of shrieks and exclamations into the next-door space, which looked to Lestrade, as he threw back a bumper of champagne, like some sort of theatre, the exultant screeches dying away as the trio of women discovered the largish figure, all padded-shouldered, trailing cape and shining medals on ribbons, wasn’t the actual prince. “A _double_? He doesn’t need one. He’s already double the size he should be,” sniffed Sherlock. 

“Found him!” Lestrade sing-songed one room and two more cups of wine later later, pointing to the opposite wall. “Oh,” came next as he span slowly, taking in all the portraits adorning the walls. “Well, if his picture counts…” 

“Oh course not!” tutted the stout lady, with whom they’d caught up again, or who had caught them up again, Lestrade wasn’t sure. Wasn’t even sure it was the same woman. Although he knew the footmen and pages were all different – they were outfitted differently for each room. 

“No drawings in here, at least,” Lestrade commented, sweeping his gaze around the space they entered next, its rows of chairs and raised dais empty. 

“This is the music room,” the overdressed gent from way back took delight in informing him. 

“There’s a whole shelf of books about the idiot in here,” called Sherlock from the next sale. “Seems to be a reading room?” 

“Yes, each room of this wing is designed for a different pleasure,” their impromptu guide enlightened them, ignoring Lestrade’s wide-eyed, open-mouthed gawking through a partially opened door at a room filled with bed. All sizes. All kinds. A gaggle of footmen helped move the small group along. 

“Don’t know about  _ different _ pleasures. It’s mostly eating,” Sherlock chipped in. “A quarter of the building is devoted to food.” 

Lestrade chortled, assuming this to be more funning, but the chortles died in his throat as they were steered through a small breakfast room, a medium-sized dining room and an enormous banqueting room, each more richly decorated than the last, before their game, or guided tour, ended in a further drink of wine and the kitchen. Was it a kitchen? It was as large as a barn. No; a cathedral, he mentally reproved himself, taking in the high ceilings and… _ stained glass _ , illuminated by the electric light shining in from outside. He could barely make out the far end of the long table, never mind the other end of the room. But by the bowing and scraping of the milling throng, he reckoned the prince must be seated there somewhere and they were all to eat in here. 

“Closer to the food,” murmured Sherlock, diving Lestrade’s thoughts as always. 

Well, no need to worry about his manners not being up to snuff, Lestrade consoled himself, helping himself and Sherlock to a final – he resolved – drink. Not when he’d be seated way below the salt and far away from whatever nobility or dignitaries were being feted at the top end. 

“Why Brighton?” Their wouldn’t-leave-it-be over-primped fellow guest was answering a query. “Because it was felt the seawater would be beneficial for His Highness’s gout.” 

“You know what else is good for gout?” Lestrade muttered as they were swept around the kitchen to admire the culinary creations displayed. 

“Not gorging on rich food?” Sherlock answered, his gaze flickering over a strange group of  two-foot-high Greek temples, Egyptian pyramids, Swiss cottages and German castles laid out on a groaning table. His eyes narrowed and he leant forward for a closer look and a sniff. “Good God. The man’s eating the entire world!” 

“You mean everything’s  _ edible _ ?” the stout lady of earlier shrilled on hearing Sherlock’s comment, pointing at the architectural-looking sculptures in front of them. 

“Everything, Baroness.” An aproned-garbed kitchen servant bowed as he assured her. “All the caprices are made of sugar and marzipan and pastry, including the plates and cups and –  Not the forks!” he cried, a little too late against the woman’s agonised screech. “The chef, Antoine Carême, worked for the Emperor Napoleon!” he continued, raising his voice over the sound of the woman’s sobs. 

“Seems a lot of people did,” Lestrade said, pondering on all the Covent Garden nuns and merry-arsed Christians in London who now effected French accents and claimed to have been Old Boney’s bits o’ muslin before fleeing France. If all their Canterbury tales were true, Old Napoleon would never have had  the time or strength to go to war, Lestrade and his fellow Public Officers had long ago reasoned. Strange how the Corsican devil was good for advertising. A thought struck him as he gazed at the elaborate off-white constructions before him. “Did that Karen man make this Brighton pavilion and all, then?” 

“Everyone’s an architect nowadays,” sniffed Sherlock, which gave Lestrade the hiccups as he tried to hold in a huge belly laugh, hoping he wasn’t detracting attention from whichever high-and-mighties were being heralded into the company of the prince, yonder. 

“I wonder which came first, these or this building,” he added, turning away to hide his streaming eyes. Which was when he saw something that made him still. “Look,” he urged Sherlock, nudging him to glimpse the smaller table whose white cloth cover was being lifted by two kitchen maids, lifted for a man dressed in chef’s whites to duck under and retrieve what it shielded. “Could be I’m addled, and seeing His Grace everywhere, but that, that grandiose head and shoulders…” 

“A centrepiece for the dining table, I should think,” Sherlock replied slowly, turning more fully as the chef exclaimed his loud approval and two footmen solemnly lifted a white portrait bust onto a shining silver salver. Seemed the chef took more than real buildings for his inspiration – he used real figures, too. The familiar-looking, hook-nosed, marble-looking head was carried up the long table with all ceremony, the guests breaking into ripples of applause and out into murmurs of admiration as it passed. 

Lestrade and Sherlock watched as the procession advanced and afterwards, Lestrade never knew how he knew, what sort of inkling he got, but whatever it was, it made him start forward just that little bit too late to prevent the guest of honour  His Grace the Duke of Wellington from loosing a harsh cry, springing to his feet and getting a strong elbow under the salver to tip the sugar paste and marzipan bust, his confectionary effigy, to the floor! There was a fat silence, then a loud “ooooh” as the dessert smashed with a brittle  _ crick-crack _ into thin, sharp pieces, at which the duke gave a salty, soldierly oath. 

“He didn’t know it was a sugar fancy!” whispered Lestrade. 

“He does now,” countered Sherlock. “And especially… _ now _ .” He jerked his chin at the small line of twelve perfectly paired footmen, each duo either bearing or loading an identical Duke of Wellington confection, pausing in confusion on their way to set their six busts down on the table. “What was your bon mot, three pairs of Wellingtons?” 

“But with the smashed one, that’s seven!” Lestrade said. “Ah. Because one’s the original. The pattern piece. But –” 

Whatever else he’d meant to say was lost in the hubbub that started up, the uproar that accompanied the duke as he advanced on the second pair of hapless footmen and their ducal-dessert-laden silver tray, advanced in the same determined manner he charged at enemy troops, Lestrade supposed. Perhaps John could’ve told them, if he’d been there, although he was lucky to be spared the sight of the country’s most decorated soldier, a leader wanted for the position of prime minister, or so Mycroft claimed, yelling a war-cry and dashing a  sugar-paste likeness of himself to the ground and crushing it to smithereens in a series of rapier-fast movements. By then the prince’s delighted cries and encouraging shouts were loud and strong as he lumbered up and along to join in, smashing away in his turn with a heavy-topped cane, his approbation for a novelty setting the fashion for it, as always. 

It was an instant loud, free-for-all mayhem. Glad he was slightly cushioned by drink, Lestrade pulled Sherlock out of harm’s way and closed his eyes rather than see lords, ladies and distinguished foreign visitors gleefully snatching up whatever kitchen implements they could get their hands on and pushing and shoving through servants and lesser guests and screeching like banshees as they willfully destroyed all the delicate, intricate, yet easily smashed  _ pieces montées _ , dancing on ’em, practically, grinding ’em to flinders. Wished he could close his ears too, against the enraged French  _ chef de cuisine’s _ howling shrieks and blue-streak curses. 

But he opened his eyes at a very different sound, the thicker shattering of the plaster of the real sculpted cast. It  _ would _ be the final one, he thought, resigned. He hoped it would be the final one in other ways too, until Sherlock’s exasperated, “ _ Nothing! _ ” told him there were no pearls concealed in the statuette. Lestrade knew Sherlock was quick, quick as thought, and wouldn’t have missed any pearls being cast before any swine here. Nevertheless, he did his duty and stared hard at the debris and the duke, seeking out any pearlescent gleam in the former and any signs of guilt in the latter. Sherlock was of course correct: there was nothing. 

“Blood and sand!” Lestrade only realised he’d covered his ears against the chef’s screeched lamentations and vociferous cursing when he had to remove one to nudge Sherlock and point out the anguished foreigner in question, who’d snatched up another pristine white tablecloth and was twisting it into a long, snakelike rope. “You don’t reckon he’s planning on, well, doing anything foolish, do you?” 

“If he wasn’t,” Sherlock replied, “he will be now.” 

Lestrade was almost afraid to look. The chef’s appropriation of the long cloth had revealed what it covered, a host of wobbling, jewel-bright jellies  _ à la Belleville _ , proudly towering blancmanges  _ à la vanille _ , gleaming domes of fruit trifles and shining mounds of iced puddings. He swung his glance from the hapless chef, trying to simultaneously kick a stool under a beam and sling his improvised noose over it, and the prince regent. Having finishing saquing the miniature temples, castles and towers as ruthlessly as any vandal, or goth or Visigoth, the huge, florid-faced man now had fresh targets in his bulging-eyed sights. With a loud, “Tally ho!” he sighted his quarry, and made his choice of weapon: a brace of muskets on one wall. 

As the prince made for them, and other members of  _ le beau monde _ either drew their own deadly weapons or rushed around, seeking some with which to annihilate the desserts, Lestrade thought it best to withdraw from the fray. He’d never understand the ways of his betters, he mused, snatching Sherlock’s sleeve and hurrying him from the battlefield behind them. 

“ _ Le bon ton _ ,” he said, shaking his head in incomprehension as they rushed back through the series of chambers a lot quicker than they’d entered them. 

“Oh, is  _ that _ His Highness’s latest nickname?” Sherlock sniped, taking in a final breath of the barely huffing dragon smoke as they reached the outdoors. “He probably weighs a good ton, yes. Just as well he didn’t stuff himself full of those desserts and puddings, really. Wellington did him a favour.” He signalled to his disreputable coachman, loitering at the carriage line. “What?” he enquired, glancing at Lestrade as they hastened over. 

“Nothing. Just thinking, all that  _ grande cuisine  _ and we didn’t even get so much as a bite to eat,” Lestrade confessed, stepping inside. 

“Oh. I suppose you’re fair gutfounded in the pudding-house, aren’t you?” Sherlock remarked, in an exaggerated yokel accent and before Lestrade could remonstrate with him, he took up a package from the seat and unwrapped it to reveal a plain supper, the hunk of roast mutton and the homely baked potato a far cry from the extravagant fare of earlier. 

Lestrade didn’t care. He never wanted to see fancy cooking again, although he was resigned to reliving in his nightmares the sight of a herd of over-dressed, over-jewelled over-loud upper crusts assaulting and battering poor defenceless sugar puddings into dust. He narrowed his eyes at the more than decent bottle of brandy Sherlock handed over.  _ That  _ was no tavern provender. He hoped Sherlock hadn’t helped himself to – No. Didn’t care. Turned a blind Public Officer eye to the royal seal and crest the bottle sported. Their vehicle clopped off, soon gaining speed. 

“Drink up,” Sherlock advised. “Have a large swallow. And another. That’s it, good.” He held out his hand for his turn at the spirits. 

“Why?” Lestrade stared at him. “You wanting to break bad news, or something?  _ Oh no.  _ You know where the remaining busts are, don’t you. And I’m not going to like it, am I.” He snatched back the bottle and held it up, scoring a line around the label with a thumb nail. “Don’t say anything until I’m down to here, yeah?” He drank deep, never taking his eyes from the unrepentant viscount opposite him.


	5. Chapter Five

**Chapter Five**

“Might’ve drunk a bit too deep,” he essayed, tumbling stiff-legged and leaden-bodied from the carriage many inn-stops, many, many hours, and many, many, many miles later into the thankfully familiar surroundings of the Baker Street backyard. At last.

“Soaked through,” commented Billy, steadying Lestrade’s progress, his half-dressed state and madder-than-a-hive-of-bees hair attesting to his recently curtailed sleep.  Well, it was cockcrow. “Tap-sopped.”

Lestrade hadn’t heard that one before and snorted. “Bit top-heavy, yeah,” he admitted, stumbling and almost pitching forward over the dawn-quiet 221 kitchen threshold.

“Don’t let Mrs Hudson hear you,” Sherlock commented. “Else she’ll whisk up some patent concoction for you to relieve your state.”

“More like scold you, you mean, for causing this state and driving me to drink!” Lestrade retorted.

“ _Driven to drink?_ ” Billy breathed, relinquishing Lestrade to Sherlock’s charge, for their journey up the stairs. “Lucky stiff. I have to walk there on me own two feet.”

“I’m not that bosky,” Lestrade assured Sherlock, taking grateful steps into the bedroom. Their bedroom. “Just, I wouldn’t say no to a sleeee –” He was facedown on the bed, their bed, before he’d finished, only half aware of his nimble-fingered viscountly valet tugging and pulling at his boots and jacket, settling him in comfort.

“You work too hard,” he thought he caught, in a tone normally velveteen but just now roughened a little.

“Have to. Way things are,” he wondered if he replied, or only dreamt. Because he did dream. Of work, mostly, Such a waste, he always thought, dreaming of the everyday. Why not of the fantastic, of foreign climes, hot suns and fine sand beaches, or heathen counties, with pointed-roof buildings and… The dream, in the way of such things, took a turn, this time to replay all the exotic sights he’d been privy to recently, rows of white effigies, as gleaming and bleached as bones, which turned back into Bow Street. Typical. Tenser atmosphere than user, all little knots of Runners and staff huddled in corners, whispering about the latest rumour, changes in the Home Office, changes in the Treasury, changes to the Metropolis…

 _Quiet_ , he thought, on waking. For at least a few seconds, until the voices in the other room grew louder.

“Yes, _awfully_ kind of you to spend days seeking out information I’d gleaned eons ago. Thank you,” came in tones of such sarcasm that Lestrade thought for a moment Mycroft was uttering them. No; all Sherlock, his voice cutting. “Yes, I suppose you could have spent that time writing. So it’s good news all round.”

John then. Well, likely to be, him living there and all.

“So that’s it then? If the pearl choker is concealed in that bust, His Grace is likely to find it. Being a habitué there.”

“Is he? What is it, then, this place? Some sort of brothel?”

“ _Sherlock!_ ” Mrs Hudson, outraged.

“Sorry.”  That was better. He was learning manners. Lestrade smiled.“Bordello, then. House of Venus. Cattery. Whatever the latest nomenclature has it.”

“It isn’t anything of the sort! Why, it’s a haven of high society! The pinnacle of the ton, the apex of _haute_ London, coveted, desired…”

“Finished?” Sherlock waited for John to splutter to a stop and to drink and cough his way back to normality. Coffee, Lestrade discovered, as Mrs Hudson crept in with a cup for him. Seeing him awake, she rolled her eyes in the direction she’d come from. Lestrade nodded, finding the motion didn’t hurt at all. Huh. And there was that ruffian, that Irregular Billy implying he’d been half-seas over. He took up the coffee gratefully, though, as the housekeeper bustled away.

“Leave it to him? Whyever should I?” Seemed he’d missed a bit of the argument, some bit that had made Sherlock indignant.

“He can return it to Dalrymple-Hamilton quietly, no questions asked, no answers needed, no drama enacted,” John answered Sherlock.

Lestrade was inclined to agree. They’d made apes of themselves already, lumbering around London – and Brighton! – like fools in a fog. Let His Grace take up the cudgels. And smash plaster statues with them. Lestrade had enough to do with his own work.

“Lestrade should return it to Wellington,” Sherlock replied, his voice flat.

“Why,” came from John, after a pause.

“Wellington…is the patron of Sir Robert Peel,” Sherlock answered, after a longer one. “Peel will be guided by him in parliamentary matters. Oh for heaven’s sake, John!”

Lestrade could imagine Dr Watson’s rapid blinking at Sherlock’s statement, prompting the subsequent exclamation.

“If you must prod and poke, I happen to know that other government departments aren’t as keen as is the Home Office on the Bow Street Runners. There are plans afoot to regulate the public officers, despite, or perhaps because of, the close relationship of the Bow Street magistrates to the Home Office and their informal agreement with the Treasury.”

“What, introduce official legislation?”

Lestrade held his breath, slipping silently from the bed to gather sufficient clothing to be presentable. He’d heard…wondered –

“An act of parliament, as tedious as that is. Peel will be charged with devising it and regulating the Bow Street officers and the other offices of the metropolis into one metropolitan force. There’ll be a lot of reorganisation. A lot of existing officers will want positions.”

“I’d imagine a lot of people not even connected to policing will want positions,” John threw in. “Seen it time and again in the army, men using their connections to press for preferment, whether it’s deserved or not. Of course, in this case, it would be.” He angled his head toward the room where a dry-mouthed Lestrade waited.

“Yes, well. Whatever.”

Swallowing hard, Lestrade saw Sherlock pace and turn, waving a hand around in a manner that would have passed for airy, say, dismissive, even – to anyone who didn’t know him.

“Lestrade seems to enjoy spending his days running about the capital, attempting to solve crimes, trying to help people –”

“As do you.” Lestrade could remain silent and hidden no longer, striding in to challenge his…love.

“Oh quite. Be a dreadful bore to have to cultivate another contact amongst those police officer barbarians.” Sherlock paced to stare out of the window at the morning bustle of the street below. Lestrade wouldn’t, couldn’t, let this pass and followed him, to stand as close as he could get.

“That isn’t what I meant, and you know it.” He cupped Sherlock’s face, turning it to his own to look deep into those strange, unearthly eyes, eyes now clouded with slight trepidation. He couldn’t stand seeing anything like that shroud those startling colours. “That was…well, as usual, I don’t have the right ten penn’oth word. _Caring._ ” He meant more than just Sherlock’s latest act, latest demonstration of that emotion. “ _Love,_ ” he whispered, against Sherlock’s lips, making it both an endearment and an abstract noun.

“I –”

A cough from Dr Watson broke them apart, broke off what Sherlock had been about to say. He didn’t need to finish his statement. Lestrade _knew_. Just as Sherlock did. Just as the hundred and one thoughts they had, deeds they did, acts they performed, all for the other, shouted it out loud.

“ _I know,_ ” Lestrade found space to whisper, as they both went to sit. He took pleasure in quoting Sherlock’s usual rejoinder to him, catching the smirk the sentence brought to his husband’s lips. “And whatever it is you’ll be having to do, that he’ll be a-making you do, in payment for that intelligence from up on high, I’ll be alongside you doing it.” His flat tone wasn’t any kind of pledge or promise, just a statement. One he punctuated with a firm nod, before holding Sherlock’s cup for Molly to pour more coffee into. For Lestrade to drink heartily of. They did tend to share rather.

“So where’s this next bust, then, and what do we have to do to get to it?” he enquired.

Within seconds, he was sorry he’d asked.

“ _Almack’s_?” he repeated, parroting John.

“Seems it’s famous,” Sherlock sniffed, raising a feathery eyebrow.

‘“If once to Almack's you belong,

Like monarchs, you can do no wrong;

But banished thence on Wednesday night,

By Jove, you can do nothing right.”’

As one, they all turned to look at Molly, quoting those lines as she set out the breakfast things on the table. She blushed a heated shade of red and murmured an awkward, “Sorry, sirs. Just, my previous mistress, Lady Polstead, used to say that about the place. Longing to be invited.”

“Lady Polstead.” Sherlock rose to pace a few steps. “Would that have been before or after she arranged to have her husband murdered?”

“Before, sir,” came Molly’s soft reply. “She was busy fleeing the country after,” came even quieter, and Lestrade swallowed a snort of laughter.

“So she was eager to be invited to this…” Lestrade began.

“These assembly rooms, yes,” Molly answered boldly enough, but shook her head firmly when Lestrade waved at her to sit to continue the conversation. “On the south side of King Street.”

“Oh, they _would_ be in St James’s!” Sherlock groaned.

“Well, it is the sine qua non of the fashionable world,” John answered. “All the best clubs are there. And this is the hardest to get into. De rigueur dress requirements – men have to be attired in knee breeches.” He looked quite far-away as he spoke. Sherlock wished he was.

“Hold hard.” Lestrade swallowed his slice of roast beef and bread. “St James is clubland, yes” – he recalled their excursion to a beyond-exclusive place for their previous case – “so what’s a lady doing wanting an entree? No decent woman even walks down those streets because of all the young bucks on the strut and the ogle there!”

“Almack’s is a mixed…well, _sex_ , social venue,” Molly whispered.

“For aspiring socialites, I presume,” Sherlock threw in, rolling his eyes at John, stopped only by the preserve-covered toasted bread Lestrade slipped between his teeth. “Why can’t they stick to polluting their own ridiculous houses with ludicrous balls during the absurd Season?” came out thickly. “Thanks,” came out even more indistinctly, when Lestrade kicked his ankle, for Sherlock to acknowledge Mrs Hudson’s handing over an illustrated guidebook of the capital’s buildings she’d been rustling through, the page turned back for him.

“Looks nice enough,” Lestrade commented on the large white Palladian building. “Big enough rooms for dances, and smaller ones for gambling, like public assembly rooms hold.” He’d heard enough of Gregson’s gabbing about Bath and its amenities to make that assumption.

“The accommodations are such that select ladies might dance with the most eligible bachelors in England, yes.” John nodded.

“Oh, so it’s a marriage mart,” sneered Sherlock. “All simpering girls on the make and idiotic beaux on the catch. Why didn’t you say?”

“Here’s an article by your friend, Sherlock.” Mrs Hudson placed a magazine on the table, and Lestrade had to smile at the Langdale Pike name on it. Soon be Piers, doing those social columns. He pointed at the story’s illustration, a line of debutantes queuing to get in, their determined mamas shoving them from behind. Didn’t think Piers would be that witty.

‘“The right of entry to Almack's confers on the recipient a greater distinction than a Court presentation, and is far more difficult to obtain,”’ he read, chuckling.

‘“Though it could be said Almack's is a triumph of style over substance; the food is sparse, the drink (non-alcoholic) is watered down and yet it is the height of aspiration for a young lady on the hunt for a husband ,”’ Sherlock took over for him. ‘“Indeed, despite the fact that the actual entertainment is decidedly dull and the refreshments rather unrefreshing, exclusion from Almack's is the ultimate social failure.”’ He looked at Molly. “So there’s a dance on Wednesdays?”

“Entry via a non-transferable voucher purchased for the season at a cost of ten guineas,” John threw in before Molly could reply, tapping a handwritten page in his notebook with his pencil. Another masterpiece in the works, Lestrade supposed. “If you can get one.”

“There’s a committee of society ladies who rule the place and who meet on a Monday to issue new vouchers and take away ones from anyone who’s misbehaved or displeased them,” Molly informed them. John’s eyes widened, and he actually took notes.

“You were sent there, to advocate for your previous employer? No; to deliver a missive from her? To no avail,” Sherlock guessed.

“They have to approve you, for you to be one of the two thousand members, you see,” Molly almost whispered.

“Well, Lady P was new money, Sherlock,” Mrs Hudson pointed out. “You’ve got an old title. Should be –”

“No, no. Not even being a member of the nobility guarantees acceptance, as only about three-quarters ever gain admittance tickets.” John flicked back a page and held it up for them to see. Not that they could read his doctorly scrawl. “There’s _waltzing_!” he breathed.“Oh, if only… No. It’s impossible. Even for you, Sherlock.”

“Nothing’s impossible, not for me. Only highly improbable,” Sherlock sniped, shooting a dark glare at John.

Lestrade stood. “Dunno about improbable waltzing but it’s highly likely I’ll be led a merry dance lest I get to Bow Street sharpish,” he announced, mindful of his work duties. He deliberately didn’t look at anyone in particular. “Now, do I feel strong enough to have a turn in the Baker Street ducking-booth?” He could really do with a hot wash, after the dust and dirt of the road.

“It’s a rain-shower-stall!” came the expected instant peeved rejoinder. “A perfectly logical invention and addition to a modern servantless household.” He ignored the manufactured coughs from Mrs Hudson and Molly. “I don’t know why you insist on comparing it to a country fair sideshow!”

“Like a test-your-strength feat?” Lestrade issued as his parting shot, en route to gather his clothes and face the combination and coordination of fancy footwork and arm power needed to force hot water up the metal pipe via the foot pump and then make it cascade over him by a swift, hard yank on the chain. At least there was no loud clank of a bell to signal success or a deadening silence to indicate a lack of prowess in the small booth set aside for this, what was it, _shower_. Quick and hot and got the job done, but it’d never replace a nice long soak in a real bath, was his forecast.

Shivering a little, shrugging hard into his coat, he found he missed his usual help, who seemed to always know when he’d be needing a hand, a slim, fine-boned hand, into his worsted prior to quitting the premises. Hmm. Suspicious at the absence and the silence and recalling Sherlock’s mood and that today was, in fact, a Monday, Lestrade made time to pass into the living room and beard its occupant seated behind his desk. He raised a brow at the series of society papers and journals fanned out in front of him on the desk top, particularly at the page bearing miniature portraits of seven society-sort ladies

‘“To use threats to make a gain or cause loss to another unless a demand is met. A form of extortion or coercion,”’ he quoted from memory, looking down on the curly-haired research scholar.

Sherlock’s lips twitched. “The final syllable from Old Norse _mal_ , meaning speech or agreement, or perhaps the Old English _mæðel_ , meaning meeting or council. From the practice of freebooting clan chieftains who ran protection rackets against Scottish farmers, and expanded circa 1826 to any type of extortion money,” he capped.

“Wh –”

“With black, of course, denoting the nature of the practice, as compared to, say, silver-mail, meaning rent paid in money,” Sherlock finished. “What? Why that look? I simply assumed we were indulging in quizzing, you on the meaning and I on the etymology, of the word blackmail.”

“Little imp. Well, as long as you know what it is…” Lestrade met the degenerate’s guileless gaze with a long, hard stare of his own before giving a short nod and turning to take his leave.

 

“Coercion…persuasion…fine line,” muttered Sherlock, watching from the window as Billy brought Lestrade’s horse ready and helped him mount. Lestrade looked up at him, his brown eyes still narrowed in suspicion and warning. “Very fine,” Sherlock finished, widening his own eyes and raising his brows as he shrugged innocently, waving Lestrade off and watching him trot out into the road. “Very fine indeed.”

Persuasion…inducement…much of a muchness. And Sherlock couldn’t do much without his resource, John had left for work, but Sherlock didn’t need him. Not when he had primary source material on its way. And which should be arriving just around…now. He released a tight grin at the figure approaching and the effusive greeting Mrs H accorded him, calculating how long it would take his friend to reach the first floor.

“Late,” he announced as the tall figure crossed his open-door threshold. “And do you have to emulate cousin Piers, cramming food into your maw on the move? You’re no good to me unable to speak.”

“Good morrow to you too,” replied Aesc equally after swallowing his mouthful. He shook free a handkerchief and dabbed at his lips, then rubbed the square into a balled-up circle between his palms, creasing it in a way Sherlock knew would have the valet for the Albany rooms cursing  the linen’s owner. “Do forgive me for hurrying Mrs H’s admirable plum cake in my haste to meet you. Oh, and you’re quite welcome.”

Sherlock beckoned him to the desk. “For…”

“Why, I obeyed the order you sent before you embarked upon your trip and held myself in readiness, here in town, in case I could be of further use to you in this case. On receiving your command this morning, I presented myself immediately at your service.” Aesc, hands cleaned to his satisfaction, returned the handkerchief to his pocket and gave a smart heel-click half-bow, his twinkle in his blue-grey eyes bright enough to reveal the twitch of his mobile lips under the red gold-gold of his moustache.

“Yes, well, I… Thank you,” Sherlock muttered. Aesc pretended to stagger back a step. It was Sherlock’s turn to rear back as Aesc reached out a hand to his forehead, then stretched out a gentle finger to pull down Sherlock’s eyelid.

“Hmm. No sign of fever or jaundice. Well well! Is the good inspector here? I feel compelled to tender my thanks to him, on behalf of humanity, oh, and assure him his medal for services to the British Empire must surely be arriving any time soon!”

“Ass!” commented Sherlock, extending his on hand to poke Aesc between the third and fourth rib in the manner Sherlock knew sent his friend into paroxysms.

“Beast!” Aesc gasped, after half a minute. He looked around until he saw the port decanter, raising an eyebrow in question. “Self-service, as usual? I need a drink.” He poured a large  glass, bringing it back to the desk. “Old times,” he murmured, taking a drink and holding it out to Sherlock. Sherlock looked from the glass to his friend and thought he’d better not…share the glass. With Aesc. Lestrade…wouldn’t like it. Wouldn’t like him to.

“Of course,” Aesc muttered, placing the glass down on the desk, nearer to him than his host, not equidistant between them. His hand was steady. “I keep forgetting, and I really shouldn’t. _New_ times,” he commented, his grin wide, open. “And I’m all for them. Now, I’m presuming the good inspector and the good doctor are engaged in their respective gainful employments and I am but a poor, pale shade of a stand-in. So, what would you have me do? Stand still and silent as you stride and spout?”

“Usually, yes.” Sherlock acknowledged the hit. “But I really am in need of you.”

“Be still my fluttering heart,” Aesc muttered, his hand to his chest. He caught Sherlock’s glare. “Sorry. To do…”

“To tell me why all this, for a start.” Sherlock indicated the various pages strewn on his desk, all Langdale Pike’s handiwork and all on a similar theme. “Why write so much about one matter?” He tapped one particular article with its caricatures of the seven Almack’s patronesses, lampooned as Grecian muses.

“Oh, no reason.” Aesc shrugged. “It’s a subject that fires readers’ imaginations; writing about it sells. And do you know how hard it is to fill column inches?”

Sherlock studied his friend. “By the tone, I’d be tempted to think you’d been denied entrance yourself and taken your revenge in ink, if I didn’t know you’ve no need to darken its doors on the hunt for a suitable wife, not with your family’s habit of marrying their sons off to neighbouring females whose lands adjoin theirs. Must be heaps of choice there.” he wondered briefly at the flicker crossing Aesc’s expression. “Either way, I’m sure you’re not a member of the club and have no cachet to help me gain an entrée.”

“Why would – Oh, the statue, bust, whatever – It’s there?” Aesc guessed. “Well, I know several members of Almack’s. We can ask –”

“Why _this_ particular patroness? You’ve expended much more vitriol on her than her fellows. Both in quantity and quality,” Sherlock commented, dragging his finger down the paragraphs and tracing the sharp-nosed, pointed-chinned cartoon drawing. “She didn’t block your application – you’ve never made one. So, personal, then. No. She doesn’t look your type. She can’t have rebuffed your advances.” He ignored Aesc’s exclamations and protests that the viscountess was old enough to be his –

“Mother.” Sherlock slammed a triumphant hand down on the print. “What did she do to your mother? And why?”

“Oh, only tried to blackball her in society tout court,” Aesc replied, scowling.

“Why.”

“Oh, some silly incident. Nothing much. Stemmed from when Mother was taken to the capital to make her debut and the always-persistent Viscountess Pleatingdown was currying favour with the queen by shepherding a gaggle of debutantes to court, having been presented the year prior. Seemed Mother was rather bored by the whole Season thing, even by then, and might have shown it and her feelings for their insistent sponsor, the viscountess.”

He sighed at Sherlock’s bored ‘hurry along’ signals. “Mother might have done a drawing caricaturing her pushy hostess as a school ma’am, chivvying her and her fellow come-outs as Dame Slap haranguing a sorry group of board school girl. All beady eyes and sharp bones, smacking her fan into her palm as if it were a ferrule.”

Sherlock found a grin tugging at his lips. There was something angular and corrective about the aristocratic lady. “How was the authorship discovered?”

“Oh, mother signed the drawing. And it sort of found its way into print. Became a popular sensation everyone chortled at.”

“I see. And what did your good lady mother do then?”

“Arranged for another print run. And set up a signing at Ackerman’s.” Aesc winced a little.

“Which would have stood her in good stead for connections in the literary world. I’m supposing her parents were not in favour of her artistic pursuits?”

“Oh, her parents pulled her home. No more Season for her. No London beaux lining up to press their suits on her, wanting her for a society or political or diplomatic hostess, with the ton’s doors closed to her by an angry patroness.”

“And so she married your father and remained in the country where she could paint and write in peace. Hmm.”

Aesc laughed, agreeing it had worked out well for his mother – or that she’d worked things out well.

Sherlock poured Aesc another, full, glass of port, waited for him to down a healthy gulp, then looked up at him from under his lashes.  “Be rather ironic, then, if the viscountess who sighted your family became the means of our entrée into the milieu she governs.”

“Wouldn’t it just? Oh, you mean, really!” Aesc eyed him. Sherlock waited for a second, for five, for ten, watching his lordship weigh and balance and reply –

“How?”

“I’m sure if I had a look around her house, I’d discover a means by which to persuade her.  Something or other.” He caught sight of himself in the looking glass – his grin was twisted.

“How?” Aesc asked again. “Just present ourselves and so walk in and, well, look around?”

“Oh, Reginald. You’ve gone conventional.” Sherlock shook his head.  “I mean, of course, disguise ourselves, break in and snoop around.” He paused again, having baited his trap. Didn’t have to wait long…

“And you have… _disguises_ ?” Trap sprung, a hooked Aesc was already chasing after him to the large wardrobe in the attic room. “Ooooh! _A chimneysweep!_ ” came a moment later.

“Possible. But I was thinking more…along these lines…” Sherlock tugged two matching costumes, uniforms, actually, free and narrowed his eyes as he looked from the livery to Aesc, mentally comparing the fit. He almost laughed at how wide-eyed his friend had become. “The silver-buckled pumps should be fine and the powdered wigs, of course, will fit anybody.”

 

“You’ve got questions,” he remarked to a still dazed-looking Aesc an hour or so later, as the coach rattled through Mayfair. “And do hold on with both hands! When have you ever seen footman riding on the back of a carriage clutching their heads with one hand?”

“When their wig’s about to fly off?” Aesc rammed the white-powdered peruke down hard on his head. He raised his voice as they clattered over cobbles. “My one question would be, how do they keep them on? How’s yours on?”

“That’s two questions.” Sherlock helped Aesc shuffle once more to his end of the small wooden step built onto the back of the four-wheeler. And when have you ever seen a footman who wasn’t clean-shaven? he thought. Aesc had refused to sacrifice his moustache and beard for verisimilitude.

“I can’t answer for every wearer of a wig but I used strips soaked through in my own concoction of starch-based adhesive, It’s in effect pressure-sensitive.” Lestrade had urged him to patent it, along with many of his “chemical concoctions”, as he referred to them. Sherlock suddenly hoped Lestrade was nowhere near this part of town. Even with Sherlock “done up like a Maypole” – another Lestrade-ism – the inspector would be sure to know him. “And for a third question?” Because things always came in threes – according to Lestrade.

“Tell me this isn’t the post-coach Piers avails himself of?”

“Of course not.” Sherlock had to shout as they rounded a bend. “This is a chariot. It’s being loaned to me. The owner – well, best you don’t know why he owes me a favour.” He wouldn’t mind that Sherlock had removed all insignia from the vehicle’s door panels and ditched the hammercloth from the box. Probably.

“I won’t ask where you got the uniforms, either. I know buff yellow isn’t Holmes colours, though.”

“It was, once. Many years ago. This is old livery that I…rescued. For just such an occasion,” Sherlock admitted, frowning at how Aesc’s frantic clutch of the wooden bar was wrinkling his white gloves. He scowled harder at the uniformed maid, stationary on the pavement, her basket of market shopping forgotten at her feet, who whistled her appreciation as they bowled along.

“It’s the shoulder knots,” Aesc observed, shrugging so his braided coat swirled. He chuckled. “Old stock, you say? Well, for once there’s an excuse as to why footman apparel borrows its look from the last century!”

The jostling and jouncing, or perhaps the unfamiliar view of the city evidently sent him into high spirits. He was laughing as they disembarked before long at the far north of the large garden square and he turned out his silk-stockinged, knee-breeched leg to compare it with Sherlock’s. “I’ve just recalled the adage they use when hiring a new running footman – calves before character!” he exclaimed. “I’ve much the shapelier limb, see – does that mean I’d be paid higher wages?”

“Hardly. The taller, the better. I’d be worth a good few shillings a year more,” Sherlock protested, indicating his stature.

“Rot! We’re evenly matched. In height, at any rate,” Aesc added, smoothing his wig flat. “The best status symbol of conspicuous wealth this year is a pair of footmen matched in height and looks, you know.”

“Oh that must be so – if you wrote it,” Sherlock carped. He cast a quick glance toward the opposite side of the square where his family’s townhouse was situated. Unlikely either of his parents were in residence. Even more unlikely any of the servants would be about this time of a Monday afternoon and less likely still they’d recognize a former family livery. The yellow had been more a canary hue in Sherlock’s childhood.

“Thinking Viscountess Pleatingdown won’t be at home at this hour?” Aesc queried, in that thought-reading way they both had of the other as Sherlock led the way to the service street behind the square. Each side had its mews, of course. This one backed onto the side of the square where stood the viscountess’s house.

“Nobody seems to be at home,” Sherlock observed, waving a lazy hand at a stable hand glimpsed over the half-doors dozing on a bale of straw. He made gestures, easily interpreted as _don’t bother yourself; we’ll go in by ourselves,_ and nudged Aesc toward the kitchen door. True, the domicile wouldn’t necessarily have its head of household or a full contingent of servants in residence, unlike the Pleatingdowns’ country house, but he would have expected more people about than –   
  
“Shh!” Aesc pressed him into an alcove along the painfully furnished and chilly hall, pointing frantically towards an open door and its inhabitant.   
  
“Old and hard of hearing.” Sherlock had already seen, heard and assessed the elderly maid’s gait and the volume at which she sang to herself as she slowly swept the carpets.   
  
“Maybe because Viscountess Pleatingdown spends the entire day at Almack’s, the servants slope off?”   
  
“The hallway bears signs of recent use, but everything’s in place, organised.” Sherlock refuted Aesc’s supposition by encouraging him to peep inside two rooms. “The staff, however few there are here, haven’t just ankled off. They’ve been given the time as free.”   
  
“Kind.”   
  
“And…not really in keeping with the martinet’s character, wouldn’t you say?” Sherlock led the way upstairs to my lady’s chamber. Wasn’t that some nursery rhyme? Whatever. Shouldn’t take long to discover something…the lady would rather they didn’t.   
  
“Is this what the gloves are for?” Aesc held up one white-covered hand prior to opening the door. “So we leave no residue?”   
  
Sherlock, ranging his gaze around the corridor, reached out to stay his partner in crime’s attempt. He pointed at a small, narrow flight of stairs leading up from the first floor, cleverly hidden away behind a painted screen unless one peered closely along the wall, and quite unlike the sweep of stairs to the next floor proper at the far end of the long corridor. “Nurses or governesses or even parents would sometimes need quick access to the nurseries or schoolrooms directly overhead on the floor above, rather than taking the longer, proper way, of course.”   
  
“The Pleatingdowns never had children,” Aesc threw in, once again hurrying after Sherlock.   
  
“And this is recently painted and well maintained. Hmm.”   
  
Aesc looked at him. “So we should – Oh, and we are.” Sherlock took only a moment to jigger the lock. The steep steps took them up, to what was presumably a now-unused room or rooms on the upper floor. The door at the top…wasn’t locked.   
  
“Wait!” Sherlock’s whispered imperative came too late – Aesc had pushed open the door.   
  
“There’s –”   
  
“Someone in there,” Sherlock finished Aesc’s agonised hiss for him.   
  
“A wom –”   
  
“Viscountess Pleatingdown. And not alone.” Was the obvious conclusion. Shushing his companion, Sherlock inched inside the small anteroom, making for a huge open chest across the corner near the far door, behind which he crouched down and signalled to Aesc to join him. “ _Hurry!_ ” he mouthed, frowning as Aesc paused to examine the room, seemingly a part of an old schoolroom, and the wooden trunk, of a type that held scholastic or sports equipment.   
  
“ _Sherlock._ ” Aesc pointed to the trunk and swallowed. Whatever he’d been about to impart died on his lips as the voices from the adjoining room grew louder – because their owners approached. A stick of a woman remained upright in the doorway and slotted a candle into a wall sconce, directing a second person into their room.   
  
“And not the strap!” she commanded, her wire-rimmed spectacles catching the light. “You had that last time. Choose something different, or I’ll choose for you. I probably will anyway, if you don’t pleasure me fully.”   
  
“Yes, ma’am. I mean, no, ma’am,” the…younger man assured her, sounding not only confused, but familiar. “I mean I will and you won’t. Well, you will be, because I will.”   
  
“I’ve told you before, no talking!” shrilled the disciplinarian, slapping a wooden rod she held in one leather-gloved hand into the palm of the other.   
  
“Eh, m’m,” mumbled the youth, through closed lips. He approached where they were concealed and bent to rummage in the chest, meaning that through the gap between hinges of the trunk’s propped-open lid, they got a glimpse of a twenty-something young man…in an outgrown school uniform…whose cap perched on top of a shock of red hair and was –   
  
“ _Piers!_ ” squeaked Aesc.   
  
“Hullo?” Piers looked up, then behind him. “Oh, not to jabber.” Piers pantomimed buttoning his lips. He held aloft a cat-o-nine-tails. “Haven’t had this for a while, have we? I’m just in the mood for one of your good, hard floggings. Oh, right, no talking.”   
  
“Come, idiot,” ordered the female despot, removing a large hatpin from the low roll of hair at her nape and jabbing it into Piers as he neared her. He yelped. “Buttons, now!” she hissed and turned. There was just enough light to see Piers sink to his knees and begin to undo the extremely long row of buttons that went all the way up the back of the lady’s long skirt, starting from the bottom. Presumable to her bottom.   
  
Aesc covered his eyes after Piers had revealed a few inches not of flesh, but of leather boots.   
  
“Come,” Viscountess Pleatingdown instructed, moving back into the other room.   
  
“Bout to,” Piers replied cheerfully, then let out an _oof_ as his instructress turned and planted a high-heeled boot in his chest, leaving him sprawled for a moment before he crawled after his domina.   
  
Sherlock nudged Aesc with a shaking elbow, motioning to him to leave. He had to guide Aesc – he still had his hands over his eyes and as a result, stumbled down the wooden steps to the first floor. As he righted himself, he removed one hand from his eyes and placed it over his mouth, remaining like that until they’d made it back through the house to their waiting coach. Sherlock thrust him in with hands that he noted weren’t quite steady, and left the door ajar in case Aesc – or he – needed to be sick.

 


	6. Chapter Six

**Chapter Six**  

Sherlock groped for the bottle slotted into the door’s leather strap before recalling this wasn’t the cab he usually employed. Damn. Aesc’s kneed knocked into his, and he turned to see his companion, still with one hand over his eyes and the other covering his mouth jerk his chin down and to the left, indicating his pocket. Of course. Be most unlike Aesc to go without his hip flask. Sherlock retrieved it for him, opened it and held it to Aesc’s mouth, his friend still too incapacitated to provide for himself. 

After a long draught and a cough and splutter, Aesc reached out to hold the metal container himself, offering it to Sherlock. “Emergency. Needs must?” he gasped, obviously recalling Sherlock’s diffidence of earlier.

Sherlock hadn’t forgotten his newfound scruples either and stirred under the seat in front with his toes, manoeuvring out a small wicker box and, success, the fortified wine therein. Thank God. For long minutes only the sounds of guzzling and swallowing filled the enclosed space. 

“I suppose,” Aesc said, eons later, “there’s no way cousin Piers was asked to work on the same case we’re engaged upon, was trying to uncover – Oh Lord. Very poor choice of word.” 

“Awful.” 

“To get to the bottom – Oh Hell!” Aesc slapped his own face. 

 “Worse still. And no, no way at all.” Sherlock took yet another long pull at the sweet wine. Kept in vehicles in case of passengers’ faintness, it was most definitely restoring him now. 

“I had no idea he…she…he…” Aesc gave up. “I can’t stop seeing it. Even with my eyes closed – especially with. Might never close them again.” Aesc shuddered, using his thumbs and forefingers to hold his eyes open. “I can still hear their voices too. You know, I might never sleep again.” 

“ _Piers!_ ” Sherlock imitated the squeak his friend had let out minutes earlier. It had been about the same pitch as the squeal Piers had made on being jabbed with the long, thin metal pin. 

“I pray you, don’t. And what’s that grin for? This must be good imbibing.” Aesc grabbed the wine from Sherlock and drained the bottle dry. 

“Just…musing.” He gave a lopsided grin. “Your good lady mother could be said to be remarkably prescient.” 

“Don’t ever tell her.” Aesc’s words were an order. “She’ll only concoct a sequel. So. What now?” 

“Now? Why, the assembly rooms, of course. To deliver a note that will persuade Viscountess Pleatingdown – ” 

“ _Beatingdown!_ ” Aesc guffawed at his own cleverness, then paled and looked ill again. 

“To vouchsafe me…a voucher!” 

“Not as good as mine.” Aesc chuckled again, and even more as between them they composed a letter for the viscountess, rife with words such as _strict_ and _rules_ and _bare_ and – 

“Her hands being tied? No, that wouldn’t be accurate!” Aesc was saying as they trotted along St. James’s Street. “Wait, you, a voucher? Won’t that look, well, odd? You’ve scorned the delights of the _ton_. Shunned them.” 

“Thought of that. That’s why I’ve asked for entrée not for myself but for a female of my acquaintance.” Sherlock made a grab for his paper and pencils as the carriage stopped and things lurched. 

“Not…your _sister_!” Aesc went so pale this time he looked green. 

“Good God, man, are you addled?” Sherlock fanned himself. “No, some other female of a background suitable enough to frequent the place and one who’s not entirely stupid, who’s helped in some modest way before. I thought her an interfering, supercilious know-it-all, but…needs must, as you said. You said she’s here in London.” 

“You don’t mean… _Jane Turner_?” Aesc snatched at the letter, scanning the details. 

“Yes, that over-read, over-confident  nose-in-the-air will have to do. Why?” 

“Well, she’s been hit hard by her father’s illness, Sherlock. I told you. She’s been taken up with his affairs, busy around the clock and –” 

“Down!” There wasn’t much risk of being seen, but Sherlock had recognised the profile of the viscountess as her coach crawled past theirs and stopped directly in front of it. “She has quite the spring in her step,” he observed as the woman practically leapt from her carriage to enter the short, paved forecourt through the gap in the railings of the plain, square building. 

“Well, I expect her, er, afternoon delight has put her in a good humour to sit through onerous committee business,” Aesc mused. 

“Unlike my poor cousin, who’ll be in no position to sit for the rest of the day,” Sherlock crowed. 

“But I’ll wager he was in one or two interesting positions, though,” Aesc capped, breaking into what almost sounded like giggles. 

“Amelia! Mwah, mwah,” trilled a stouter, shorter patroness, passing into Almack’s forecourt behind the viscountess and calling out a greeting. 

“There you two are!” exclaimed a flouncy, ringletty blonde lady coming from inside to meet them. “We have a full list to discuss today, and do have a peep at this! We wanted to admire it in natural light…” She turned, making an imperious gesture back into the building, and two liveried men followed carrying a plinth which bore something covered with a cloth. Four other ladies, presumably all patronesses, followed, twittering and shrilling as the column was set down in the courtyard. 

“This might even be a suitable place for it!” gushed one younger lady. 

Viscountess Peatingdown turned a stern eye on her. “No; it won’t,” she decreed, competing with her bouncier fellow hostess to snap her fingers for the cloth to be removed. 

“Ohhhh!” came from at least nine throats, two of them Aesc’s and Sherlock’s. 

“It’s there! That’s it, there!” Aesc exclaimed, jabbing a finger against  the glass as he pointed. 

“Yep, got that, thanks.” Sherlock started from the carriage towards the fenced-off patio running the front of the building – and the bust of the Duke Of Wellington it now housed. The slam of the coach door behind him told him his friend was backing him up – although to do what, he didn’t know. Would never know, not seeing as a tall, upright male figure overtook him, pushing him aside as it stormed the gap in the railing and charged the paved forecourt. 

“Your Grace!” came in more honeyed tones than Sherlock had heard the vinegar-tongued viscountess employ so far. She and five of the ladies sank into curtsies. “Make obsequience!” Amelia hissed at the one elderly lady remaining upright. “You’re only a European princess – this is an English duke!” 

Sherlock wondered if a hatpin was employed at this point, to ensure obedience and Aesc’s jabbing gesture announced his mind was running along the same lines. 

“How may we…render service to you, Your Grace?” 

This drew another, choked-back, set of giggles from Aesc, and Sherlock, flattening them both against the outside of the railing, caught the bouncy woman licking her lips but missed Wellington’s words. 

“ _Enter?_ ” came in a shocked, stentorian female voice. “But you’re wearing _trousers_!” 

“We know Beatingdown’d prefer him without!” sniggered Aesc. 

“ _Shh!_ ” ordered Sherlock, craning to see and hear. Not that there was much need – the enraged duke launched into a tirade about meddlesome, interfering, designing women who set out to supervise and oversee and administer and – 

“Oh, Lor’. He _is_ a politician. Everything’s in triplicate!” Sherlock couldn’t help observing. 

“And so my trousers anger you, do they? Is that because you’d love to wear the breeches yourselves?” the duke finished with a flourish. With a, “ _Pahhh!_ ” he flung out an arm…and knocked his likeness bust from its perch on the makeshift plinth, to shatter it on the stone paving below. In the gasped-breath silence that followed, he gave a short bow and turned smartly to take his leave. 

“You! Shave that face fungus off!” he ordered Aesc as he passed him, his quick pace not preventing him from noticing the ‘footman’s’  red-gold beard and moustache. “And where’s your blasted wig?” 

“Fallen by the wayside for lack of adhesive,” Aesc muttered, in the duke’s wake. “Well, better go and examine the debris before – Sherlock? Don’t we need to –” 

“No.” Sherlock made for the carriage, leaving the patronesses to argue among themselves which of them the duke was mad with love for and trying, in his endearingly bluff, clumsy, soldierly way, to sweep into a side room for a passionate tryst, defying all society’s rules by attempting said seduction before six p.m. “And by wearing trousers,” Sherlock muttered. 

“Well, presumably not for long, not for what they have in mind.” Aesc jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the bickering women and shuddered. He hoisted himself up after Sherlock. “Now what?” 

“The final bust, I suppose, wherever that should prove to be. With nothing having been concealed in that one.” 

“And you’re sure? Both of you? With neither of you examining the rubble?” 

True – His Grace hadn’t seemed to spare the debris even a cursory glance as he stormed away. Hadn’t kicked a boot through the larger shards, as Sherlock might have expected. But he trusted Wellington’s accuracy and discernment. “What?” he asked as Aesc shook with laughter again. 

“Oh, just glad Mother wasn’t there.” He wiped his eyes. “She’d have made an entire book from that incident.”

“Or John – he’d have had an entire series contracted on the strength of it,” Sherlock sniffed.  
  
“That’s it from me, I’m afraid.” Aesc craned his head out of the carriage window to read the time on a clock. “It’s been the most tremendous lark. Quite like old times. But I have an evening engagement. Duty calls.”  
  
Not…quite like old times, Sherlock thought. The evening would have ended very differently. “Take the carriage,” he offered. “Can’t have you walking through the St. James’s and Piccadilly Streets to the Albany so apparelled. You’d be a cursed rum touch.”  
  
“You’re not quite bang up to the knocker yourself.” Aesc stuck his grinning head out of the window once Sherlock had quitted the chariot, to indicate his livery.  
  
“Oh, I’ve no pretension to be all the crack,” Sherlock called, walking away.  
  
“I’ll take the ride as your thank you.” Aesc urged the driver on. “Rather than you risking apoplexy by saying the word again!”  
  
It wasn’t a long journey to Sherlock’s bolt hole in Montague Street a little over a mile away, even if the despised footman livery did attract a few catcalls and whistles as he passed around Covent Garden. He could have dropped his companion off and continued in the carriage, or hired a cab or horse, but walking helped Sherlock think. And being on the streets gave him the opportunity to link up with or send missives to…various helpers. He smiled as he entered the modest Bloomsbury lodging house where he kept a simple room, recalling Lestrade’s delighted triumph in having tracked Sherlock to and bearding him at his Rotherhithe hideaway over a year ago. The good inspector had no idea about this facility, just as no locals, clerks, artisans and tradesmen at the neighbourhood’s institutes and businesses had any idea that _S. William_ was any different to them. For all his duties had him away travelling a lot.  
  
And, as it turned out, he was in the right place at the right time, although he might not have thought so, looking at the young man in the booth opposite him. “You’re sure?”  
  
“Yes, sir!” stammered the man, drawing into himself, meeting Sherlock’s eyes fervently, then looking down and blushing under the black looks and loud tuts his brown overalls garnered him in this Charlotte Street chop house.  
  
Sherlock turned to lance the frock-coated patrons with an ice-cold glare. Minor scientists and academics, if that, to a man, he judged. “A bust made by Edward –”  
  
“Hedge Ballantyne, yes, sir!” the man finished.  
  
“At the British Museum, erm, Andrews, isn’t it?” Sherlock never knew where the requests he sent out through his network would be answered. Or by whom. So while this bran-faced and provincial Johnny raw looked a most unlikely repository of information, Sherlock had learned long ago not to prejudge.  
  
“People call me Andy, sir.” The youth ran a hand through his untidy black hair. He had the sense to wait until the waitress had deposited the drinks she’d brought them. Andy slid his saucer free of his coffee cup and turned it over, examining the underside.  
  
“Well, you’re a museum body all right. But never been in here before. And from Staffordshire, originally,” Sherlock remarked, rolling his eyes at Andy’s gape. Child’s play. “And you won’t have an early supper?”  
  
“I’ve only got ten minutes. I have to get back, finish my work. I had to take time away today,” Andy explained. looking all around as though one or more of the house’s patrons might forcibly drag him back to his duties. “But the bust wasn’t in the museum. I was. Working there. I mean. I’m mostly on unpacking and placing. Packing and storing. Then Professor Barnes comes out of his office on the Hellenic floor, where I was. All in a rush, holding a letter. A commission. He’d forgotten. He’s like that. A genius, you know?”  
  
“Really.” Sherlock chinked his cup down on its rest.  
  
“I’m there in the corridor, first thing he claps eyes on. ‘I need help with my reference books. You there, you’re clean-looking. You’ll do’, he says to me. ‘Come with me.’ And so off we went! Into a four-wheeler and everything!”  
  
“To…”  
  
“All the way to Pall Mall!”  
  
A whole mile, Sherlock thought, fighting the urge to roll his eyes. Then he frowned. “What scientific institute or even commercial gallery is there?”  
  
“No, it were a club.”  
  
“Of course. What else is in that area.” He should have known. “And your doctor was asked to, what, authenticate or evaluate some…artefact or work of art?”  
  
“I suppose so. I didn’t get no farther in than the foyer, then I were took off to the kitchen to wait. But on the way back, when I was told Dr Barnes was calling for me, I took a wrong turn trying to find him and got mistook into a salon. And there, up on the wall, in an alcove, was the Hedge Ballantyne sculpture of His Grace The Duke of Wellington.”  
  
“And you’re sure.”  
  
“Yes, Mr Holmes, sir. I like to hear and read about new art, what’s been discovered, or brought to England, or created recently. We all do, wondering what we’ll get donated next.” His face flushed red again. “I know I’ve no business messing in things rightly left to my betters. Just, I’m, well…”  
  
“Interested.” His curiosity and eagerness put his jaded, hidebound “betters” to shame. “And did you catch the name of the club?”  
  
His companion shook his head sadly. “But it was all the way down Pall Mall then the first street right. There were horse, right bang-up cattle. Must’ve been the Royal Stables. Ohh.” He barely flinched as Sherlock thrust out a hand and stroked his fingers behind Andy’s ear, retrieving a round metal object that he held out to the man, closing Andy’s around it when he took it. His companion’s eyes were almost as large as the coin. “Ohhh… _Sir._ This is –”  
  
“For you.” Sherlock knew the value of the money he’d gifted his helper with. “You earned every penny. Look, consider most of it a retainer,” he continued loudly over the lad’s stammers and gasps. “I’ve a feeling I’ll be needing you again, and I expect you to be available, yes?”  
  
He dropped more coins into the waitress’s hand as he exited the eating establishment, enough to cover the cost of a supper neither he nor his guest had partaken of. So, back to clubland. Again. Really, the sojourning to St James’s, the penetrating of its clubs he’d had to do for the case several months ago, the one John insisted on calling A Study in Pinks had been enough for him. And so to be forced to frequent the area once again, to gain entrance into more gentlemen’s’ establishments, seemed harsh punishment.   _Wait._ Pall Mall, even the arse end of it Andy had described, wasn’t just given over to idle pleasure haunts. It contained more than the drinking and gaming dens sought out by men needing refuge from the hurly burly not of public life – hence the idle – but from the domestic sphere and their womenfolk. Hmm. Good thing he’d sent a message to John, who didn’t take long to arrive.

“And I’m fine as I am?” John queried, after being apprised of the latest development.

Sherlock spared at look at John’s garb. “Fine. It’s getting dark, anyway.”

“No, as myself! Because I can always counterfeit top-of-the-trees. You recall, in Pinks –”

“You’re _fine_ ,” Sherlock repeated, his tone heavier. He’d have much preferred Lestrade, but in addition to the inspector being engaged in work, John might prove better suited for the evening’s demands. “I need you exactly as you are. A doctor and a soldier.”

“Not like you to do anyone up sweet – Oh, you really mean it.” John, realising his skills and history were truly needed, recovered from having thought himself toad-eaten. “Why, we’re practically in Charing Cross!”

“Yes.” Sherlock nudged his companion to continue along the road after the Stables. He soon stopped. The white Neoclassical-style building with a Doric portico looked similar to several others they’d passed, but its bas-relief frieze had been recently added, as, he’d wager, had been the classical statue above the portico. Presumably the scholar from the museum had ventured to give his opinions on one or the other? Sherlock couldn’t make out any details, in the half-dark.

“It’s sort of like a town-house trying to be a mansion.” John whispered.

Sherlock silently agreed. “Don’t write that down,” he warned, slipping underneath the porch – also a recent addition, he discovered. He rapped smartly at the door and within seconds a small grille was slid back for the doorkeeper to peep through.

“Yes?” asked a deep voice.

“Sherlock Holmes,” he announced.

“This is a private members’ club and you’re not a member,” came the reply, the voice low.

“Obviously. But I need to enter your little whatever it is, dining club? Supper club? Gaming den? So I’m prepared to join.”

Beside him, John nodded.

“Oh are you indeed?” The voice rose a little. “And what justifies your ingress?”

“I’m a damn peer of the realm,” answered Sherlock, tartly. “Look me up in Debrett’s.”

“Breeding bedevilled! This is no high society institution for swells of the first stare.”

“Oh, let me guess. It’s some sort of reform establishment, then, intended to be a forum for discussing radical ideas?” Sherlock yawned. “I can spout off sweeping political statements for hours, argue for or against either side of a question. It’s all one to me.”

“It’s true.” John stretched up on tiptoe to back him up. “He doesn’t even know the difference between Whigs and Tories. Or even what they are,” he added a little more softly.

“Professed ignorance is hardly a badge of knowledge!” exclaimed the house’s guardian.

“Oh, so you’re some kind of university club, for alumni? I was up at Oxford.”

“Having gamed and drunk your youth away is no mark of intellect!” the voice shrilled at Sherlock. “Begone, sir. You’re not the sort we want here.”

“Let me.” John went to brush Sherlock aside. Sherlock wouldn’t budge, forcing John to call around him. “I believe this to be a travellers’ club? Welcoming gentlemen who’ve forayed abroad, beyond the realms of the British Isles? I am quite prepared to list all the foreign counties I’ve visited.” He nodded.

“Visited…or waged war in?” the unseen person demanded.

“Ah, well, yes, but… I-I’m a man of letters, a professional, a doctor!” cried John.

“And if anyone were to get into a mill, I’m sure you’d be quite handy for stanching the claret or rubbing arnica into bruises. Oh wait, we can do that ourselves. Without sending round a greatly padded-out reckoning for the service,” scorned the invisible host.

“Sherlock,” John whispered. “What if this is like that uncanny club of which your brother is said to be a member?”

Sherlock started. “The Diogenes Club?” There were rumours, legends…myths.

John swallowed. “Where no one may speak!” he said, looking around.

“Oh, you’d suffer there, you gabster!” came in judgement from behind the door.

“ _Oh!_ ” Sherlock was enraged. He beat on the door with both fists. “What the hell kind of club is this establishment? I demand to know!”

“Why, a society for learned discourse, a venue to present well-reasoned lectures, to exhibit scientific drawings, to hold enlightening discussions, to expound on roundly researched theories. A venue for virtuosi to converse with others who seek to increase their knowledge in a civilized setting. A space for those of all levels of knowledge to share information and enrich their own personal interest. A home for the curious.”

“But that’s _me_!” cried Sherlock, thumping anew on the door.

“But you lack one vital part of what those enjoying the life of the mind within these walls have,” continued the voice, high and thinner now.

“And that is?”

“Ovaries!” came the answer. “The Athena Club is a society for women! _Ha!_ ” The female on the other side of the door shrieked in triumph, striking the wood herself, in counterpoint.

“Oh yes! Why, look, there’s the goddess of wisdom, Athena, up there,” John pointed out.

Sherlock snatched up one of the flambeaux near the door and lit it, to hold it aloft. “Why, so it is. Above the pediment which bears a rather poor copy of part of the bas-relief frieze of the Parthenon in Athens. I do so hope you didn’t think it original, madam?”

“ _Grrrraghh!_ ” came from within. “Be off with you. This temple is consecrated to the fairer sex, Sherlock Holmes. And pray do not even think about robing yourself in female garb – you’d make a most ill-conceived woman!”

“ _Ha!_ I wouldn’t dream of it!” Sherlock informed his unknown interlocutress, casting down the torch and turning smartly to take his leave, scowling blackly at the peals of laughter floating after him. 

“Sherlock? Sher-lock!” John, trotting valiantly along the Pall Mall, then the St. James’s streets after his much longer-legged companion, stumbled at the, “I _will_ gain entry to that blasted place!” that floated back to him on the evening breeze. “You’re…dreaming of it, aren’t you. Oh no.” He glanced around in dismay at the Covent Garden market stalls – what remained of them, at that hour of the day. “Oh no indeed. You’re dreaming of something… _far worse_.” 

Afterwards, Sherlock was to acknowledge that John had perhaps been, to some extent or other, not entirely too far off the mark, but at the time, fired up, he merely glowered at the cowardly doctor as he himself ducked behind a deserted stall with his newfound helpmeet. “I am quite determined to see this through. To gain entrance to that petty clubhouse. To find the statue.” He popped up, half re-robed. “If you’re not with me in this, I suggest you take yourself off.” 

“I am. I have to!” John held his nose and backed away. “Christ above, man! You’ve gone too far. You need help. And you stink!” 

“’Eer, who’re you a’calling a stink? Gertcha!” fumed the trader to John’s fleeing form. “That’s the honest stench of an ancient trade, that is!” 

“Ancient being apt,” Sherlock muttered, swallowing at the pungent reek of the overalls and boots he’d donned and poking at the few fish remaining on the monger’s barrow. They smelled even worse. 

His wizened companion laughed, wiping his spittle from the barrow. “Them ’uns the sprats. The leavings. I goes around the lodging houses and strippies – the landladies and strumpets is pleased to get a cheap bit o’fry for their suppers and their lodgers’ brekkers.” He spat out at a mangy-looking cat that slinked from the shadows to extend a sly paw to his wares.

“Well, I won’t be doing that,” Sherlock informed the barrowman, who didn’t understand. It took quite some time for Sherlock to make the man realise that Sherlock’s buying up of his stock, and hiring his cart and uniform didn’t mean he would be completing the fishman’s round for him. 

With the disgusting cove’s laments of, “All me nice coley tail” Me loverlee snapper heads!” following him as annoyingly as now three underfed felines padding behind him, Sherlock retraced his steps for Cockspur Lane and that detested debate or discourse club and its even more disliked guardian. He plodded, his barrow jouncing and clattering, threatening to heave and twist from his grasp, along cobbles and curves. The softer counterpoint to the wooden trudge, the chittering whisper, reminding him oddly of the sea, came, was occasioned, he found, by the string mesh of cockles tied loosely to the slats underneath the top tray. 

Was he supposed to push the damn stall from behind? No; made it harder to steer and control, its lurches fiercer. He swore and cursed as one particularly bad hole in the paving jostled his contents free and he had to stop and scrabble to collect the revolting slimy and smelly fish and replace it on his display, losing a wrestling match for a stiff bit of Pollock with a vicious-pawed tabby who swept and scooped much faster than he could. Blaspheming, Sherlock sucked his gouged thumb to clean the blood and rattled on. Huh. He’d never had said he had much in common with the Iron Duke, but the man’s ringing judgement of earlier about women came back to him. Damn harridan. He’d defeat her. 

Soon his throat was hoarse from shouting back at the myriad numbskulls and cretins who thought it great sport to call remarks after him or hail him by a variety of names and titles. Pushing the ramshackle barrow down the narrow cobbled alley was the hardest stretch of the journey so far, but he persevered, cursing at each jolt and jerk and dripping with sweat from his labours. The back gate wasn’t locked, well; not once he’d taken a thin, twisted strip of metal to it and shouldered it open. Dragging the detested barrow with him, he entered. Shouldn’t be too hard to fool whatever imbecilic household servants were around and gain admittance to the kitchen, from where he’d make his way inwards and – 

 

“Sherlock!” Lestrade, dashing into the back yard ahead of John on their quest, cried out. He hadn’t quite believed Dr Watson’s garbled tale, but now he was glad he’d rushed out, seeing in the thin, pale light spilling from the house, seeing this… “What…” 

“A criminal fishmonger!” John  panted, catching him up. “I told you!” 

“You did,” Lestrade muttered, stepping forward, then back and wafting a hand under his nose at the stench he encountered. 

“You’re ruining my disguise!” yelled Sherlock. “Pretend you don’t know me!” 

“Wish I didn’t. You’re a damn sorry sight,” he told the viscount, taking in his lank locks under the misshapen, battered straw boater and his body stuffed into filthy overalls and covered in streaks, smudges and scales. He gazed from the bedraggled man to the four mangy cats enjoying the fish on top of the cart abandoned in the paved yard. 

“But quite an expected one.” The female voice, not unfamiliar, came from the opened doorway behind Sherlock. “Of course, I wasn’t completely sure what masquerade he would effect, but…” 

“I am engaged on an investigation!” Sherlock howled at the cloaked and hooded figure, waving his fists about wildly. “I am working on an extremely important case!” This with a stamp of each foot, making the fins and guts stuck to him flake off. 

“You’d better come in, then, Sherlock Holmes,” said the person. “That is, after…” She stepped aside for two servants to file past her. Before Lestrade could guess their intent, or indeed what they carried, there came a _whooosshsplosh_ and a loud, indignant squeal. 

“Ladies present,” Lestrade warned the viscount, hoping to cut off the stream of invective that followed Sherlock’s untimely shower. He caught the square of towelling thrown to him and began to mop up, dodging Sherlock’s flailing arms and thrashing head, all of which released sad, sorry streams of water. Cold water. He hid a smile at Sherlock’s wet-cat impersonation and helped peel off the sodden overalls. Not that Sherlock’s own clothes underneath were much drier. 

“I suppose all three of you should enter,” the figure decreed, stepping inside the shadowy scullery, lamp hefted high. 

“I know that woman! Just can’t place…” John muttered, hurrying to join their procession, tailing after the sniggering Lestrade and the shivering Sherlock. Lestrade hoped he wouldn’t start flicking through his notebooks for information. 

The kitchen was…a kitchen, no clues there as to the owner’s identity. The corridors was nicely decorated enough, Lestrade supposed, sort of highbrow. Whatever that meant. The hall was high-class, more lamps and sconces, flowers, pictures, books on tables. The figure, the woman, stood deliberately in a pool of light at the foot of the stairs. 

“I suppose you are wondering who I am and this place came to be,” she began, flinging out a dramatic arm. 

“Not at all,” called Sherlock, then sneezed. 

“Madam, could we leave off the theatrics and get Sherlock in front of a fire?” Lestrade begged. 

Sherlock’s, “That’s not necessary,” and their hostess’s, “I make the rules!” clashed against the other, to be drowned out by a frantic pounding on the front door. A frenzied hammering and a desperate voice. 

“I know that voice too!” John exclaimed, cocking his head. 

“Isn’t that –” 

“Aesc!” Sherlock finished for Lestrade. 

“And he’s demanding entrance.” 

“Even though he has no uterus,” Sherlock pointed out maliciously, eyeing the cloaked woman. 

“Oh for heaven’s sake!” cried the woman, crossing to the door. She flung it open and stepped well back as Aesc tumbled in, mid-thump. 

“I will enter! I believe this house holds a woman who is – Jane!” Aesc finished on a scream, pointing at the now unhooded figure. The woman stood there, long blonde hair slightly disarrayed but her hazel eyes as popping as ever and her pointed nose turned up even more than usual. If that were possible. 

“Madam. Miss Turner. By your leave.” Lestrade did the pretty, drawing Aesc’s gaze to him. “Could you at least provide a blanket for Sherlock?” Which drew Aesc’s attention to – 

“ _Sherlock?_ What are you doing here? And, egads, why do you reek so?” 

“There’s a fire in here,” called John from another room. 

“John too?” 

“Blood and thunder – seems in giving Piers your job, you’ve taken on his witlessness!” Sherlock informed Aesc, striding in to the room John indicated and making for the hearth. 

“Nice room,” John commented, approving of the portrait sketches, the works of art, the cases of books. “Erm…” he indicated Aesc, striding furiously around, whipping cloths from tables and raking through cupboards, even rifling through cabinets and cases, despite Jane shrieking at him to desist and batting his hands away. 

“This is _my_ house!” she shouted in a voice that wouldn’t have been out of place on a parade ground. 

“I know and it’s a damned sorrow and shame!” shouted Aesc in reply. 

“WHAT!” screamed Jane. 

“That poverty has forced you to become a, a faro’s daughter and start running a, a, _gambling den_!” Aesc dropped his voice on the last two words. 

“WHAT!” yelled Jane again, right in Aesc’s face. “How DARE you, you –” 

“Cretin?” Sherlock tossed over from his seat by the fire. “Sapskull is a good one too.” 

“A gaming house, madam!” Aesc would not stop. “For faro, or bassette or –” 

“Aren’t they the same thing?” John enquired, licking his pencil. He was actually taking notes. 

“Or nap or euchre –” 

“Those definitely are,” observed Sherlock. 

“Or odds and evens or roule –  Ohhh!” 

That wasn’t the name of the gambling game; rather the noise Aesc made when Jane drew back an arm and slapped his face. Hard. 

“Jane?” He blinked his blue-grey eyes and rubbed his abused cheek, his fingers scratching on his sparse beard. 

“Oh I assumed you’d succumbed to hysterics! Have you finished?” she enquired, tapping a foot in a staccato beat.

 


	7. Chapter Seven

 “Madam, Aesc, I suggest we sit and discuss this calmly and –” 

“Do you see any decks of cards? And green baize cloth? And counters, banknotes?” Jane ignored Lestrade’s hopeful words to demand. “No, because there aren’t any! This room contains books, mainly of a political, historical and biographical nature, written by this female-only society. Behold essays, monographs, theses, dissertations!” 

Aesc tried not to flinch as Jane rushed about the room, whipping a row of said tomes off the shelf and piling them into his arms. 

“These works of art were also created by this fairer-sex society in fields of an artistic nature,” came as she tugged free a portrait drawing to add to Aesc’s burden. “And in this room the members will come together to hear one of our number open a discussion on the widest range of subjects imaginable. This society for discourse will also hold concerts of music and fortnightly dinners and host Academic Prize Competitions! It is not a golden hall in which to court Lady Luck, numbskull!” 

“It used to be,” Lestrade said creating a stunned silence. He went to relieve a dumbfounded Aesc of his burden, setting it on a small table near the fire. “And nothing as fancy as quadrille or whist. Used to be a dice den.” He ignored everyone’s stares and thought better than to add that the dice hadn’t necessarily been straight ones, either – hence Bow Street’s involvement in this gambling establishment at the wrong end of St. James’s. “Not that long ago, too. Is that what made you think it was a hell?” 

Aesc answered Lestrade, but his gaze was on Jane. “I’d, well, heard…rumours, back home, that –” 

“My father has myriad business interests. All of which, after leaving him under the medical regime of my devising and direction,  I’ve studied and taken over. Improved. The estate’s doing better than ever, thanks to my scientific management and my systems, and I’m rationalising my father’s property holdings. Divesting or making into co-operatives or bettering. Or reclaiming, as here.” Jane stuck her nose high in the air. 

“Oh, thank God that you’re not in Queer Street. That the estate’s not in Dun territory, with your father’s illness and incapacity, as I’d feared.” Aesc took Jane’s hand. 

“Oh and why, pray tell, sir? What’s it to you, might I enquire? What would you do, eh?” Jane attempted to pull her hand free, but Aesc grasped it tightly. A slight tug of war followed. 

“Do? Why, I’d, I’d frank you. of course! I’d save you.” Their tussle had him losing his balance at that point, and he stumbled to his knees, which might have prompted his next utterance. “Hell, Jane, I’d _marry_ you!” 

“ _Marry me!_ Marry...me?” It came out in a whoosh so fast and furiously, yet seemed to stick at the end. 

“Yes.” Aesc glanced around the room, taking in the open-mouthed spectators, John quite forgetting to take notes, and his and Jane’s pose reflected in the large glass above the mantel. “I’d be happy to.” 

He certainly looked content enough, Lestrade judged; twinkle in his eyes, smile lighting up his face as he gazed up at his lady. 

“To bring me under the security of your wing, I suppose,” Jane scorned, drawing in a breath to no doubt refute any need for that, to lay out her calculations and projections. Aesc wasn’t totally stupid, however. 

“Oh no, my dear Jane. To get under yours. And your talents. Have you manage my concerns. You’re so much better at it than I could ever be. So much cleverer. You should have as broad as canvas as possible for your schemes and purposes.” 

“One way to a woman’s heart, I suppose,” huffed Sherlock. But what about romance? Lestrade wondered. He needn’t have worried. Much  – 

“And I, well, care for you. I also have. I didn’t realize how much, but at the thought you could be in difficulties, well, my heart quite turned over.” 

“That’s medically impossible,” came from Jane, Dr Watson and Sherlock, all together. Lestrade rolled his eyes, but didn’t fail to spot the softening in Jane’s. 

“You wouldn’t have to live with me, my Jane. I wouldn’t ask that. You could still reside  at your home, with your father –” 

“Oh no. I’d want to live with you. Your library’s better.” Jane yanked Aesc to his feet.  “And, well, I care for you. When I thought you were marrying that designing hussy, Miss Adler, well, I wasn’t happy.” 

No, she hadn’t been, recalled Lestrade, swallowing as he remembered Jane’s…not happiness, and revenge. Surprisingly, of all the viewers, including a host of servants peeping in the door, it was Sherlock who broke the deadlock, the staring and hand-holding competition between Aesc and Jane. 

“Oh for heaven’s sake, kiss, you idiots.” 

And so the couple did. Most satisfactorily, if the cheers and whoops from the household staff were any indication. 

“John, please.” Lestrade shook his head and glared at John until, blushing, the chronicler put away his paper and pencil. 

“Shall it be soon, darling, the wedding?” Aesc asked, submitting to thumps on the shoulder and handshakes from those present, then pushing back a lock of hair that had tumbled from his affianced’s bun to tangle in her necklace. 

“You have to negotiate the dowry, arrange a London residence first!” John, silver fork novelist in training, was incensed. 

“Oh, we could live here! I could help you set up this place,” Aesc commented. “Be an interesting new venture.” 

“Ooooh! A man about the house _could_ be useful,” Jane mused. 

Lestrade fought not to roll his eyes again. “Pity you’re not in orders, like your friend – you could do the honours, in your turn,” he commented to Sherlock. Aesc had married _them_ , after all. 

“Ohh! There! I say, shall I get a hammer?” burst from John, springing to his feet. 

“I’m not well read in the society pages, but I’m hard pressed to think of what about an engagement calls for a blunt instrument?” Lestrade queried of the room at large, in the face of John’s gibbering and capering about, leaping and pointing to a display plinth up on one wall. A display shelf housing a…head and shoulders bust. A familiar white plaster head and shoulders bust. 

“No. There’s no need to smash it.” Sherlock strode to the pedestal and inched the statuette down. He held the Wellington likeness aloft. Lestrade joined him to examine it. All that work over these things and he’d never seen one up close. It was probably a good portrait statue, he guessed. Lifelike, the general’s stern narrow-eyed expression rendered faithfully, as were his features, including that huge beak of a nose. Huh. Didn’t artists usually flatter their sitters a little, or a lot? 

“No need to smash it because there isn’t anything hidden in it,” Sherlock continued. 

“But the stolen jewels!” John protested. 

“John, John. your fanciful writer’s imagination is all well and good”–he paused to scowl at the scoffing noises coming from Jane, who clearly begged to differ – “but think of the man in question. _The Iron Duke._ From what we know of his character, his beliefs, if he understood a theft had taken place, would he attempt to recover the stolen property in secrecy?” 

“Wasn’t just a theft though, was it?” Lestrade threw in, jerking his head at John, who’d told them the tale of the extra-marital dalliance, the wife’s shame at the loss of her jewels, precious gems from her husband’s family… “And he didn’t know which of his officers was the guilty party.” 

“And, and, the honour of the regiment,” John stuttered. 

“Even so. Particularly so. From what I’ve read in a work about Wellington’s time in the peninsula…” Sherlock turned in his pacing, avoiding John’s eye. 

How the Hades did he not blush? Lestrade wondered, recalling the book in question, John’s self-published memoirs of his time in the army, a volume Sherlock had helped himself to and laughed himself sick over. 

“His Grace, on being told a soldier had not removed his hat and bowed his head to a local priest he passed in the village, forced the entire regiment to march back and forth on a makeshift parade ground in the village square under the midday sun, did he not? And upon receiving a complaint that soldiers had commandeered locals’ supplies and provisions, Wellington docked each and every man under his command a shilling, to be passed to the town mayor for distribution, no? Quite.” Sherlock evidently took John’s hard swallow for confirmation. “No. Old Nosey would not resort to subterfuge like that. Old _Nosey_.” 

Sherlock stroked a long finger down the plaster profile, then set the bust down on the table in the centre of the room for them all to admire the glaring eyes and beyond-noble nose. “No. Nothing concealed. There never was, was there, Jane? If I may make free of your given name. So, _Jane_. Please tell us about the portrait busts of Wellington.” 

“What?” John gasped. 

“The art and literature in this room is the creation of the members of the society, is it not? And yet the organisation is not yet up and running. All these volumes are penned by the same hand, the same hand which executed this passable enough drawing.” Sherlock dismissed the books and picture Jane had piled on Aesc and which Lestrade had freed him off, still heaped on the small table near the hearth. “So this bust too comes by the same hand. And what about the hand?” 

Jane squeaked and Aesc protested as Sherlock snatched at her hand and held it up, examining it with his magnifying glass. 

“No callouses, bruises or flakes embedded in the nails, cuticles or creases that would indicate working with plaster. Conclusion: Miss Turner is not a sculptress. She is an artist of a different colour. And unlike His Grace, Jane has been known to indulge in subterfuge.” 

He ignored his old friend’s, “Oh, steady there.” 

“Jane has books and other learning material sent to her disguised as parcels from milliners or mantua makers. She takes instruction from her tutor via correspondence, the letters presumably sent to and on from a third party? This we know. I’m prepared to bet that Jane was eager enough to be sent abroad to further her education, or broaden her horizons, or acquire some sophistication, in Europe. Brussels? Coincidentally at the time of the battle of Quatre Bras. Was it very tedious, attending the Duchess of Richmond’s ball when there were far more intellectual pursuits available to you in a cultural capital?” 

“Fairly,” Jane replied, in the short interval in which Sherlock paused to suck in breath, having delivered his speech in one long exhalation. “But I found a few ways to pass the time.” 

“Aesc, I don’t know whether you’re fortunate or not in that your bride bears marked similarities to your mother,” Sherlock mused. 

Aesc chuckled, perhaps understanding. “Oh, they’ve always got on. Have a lot in common, yes. Love reading, writing…” 

“Sketching,” Lestrade added. “Did you draw portraits of many of the guests, that evening?” 

She nodded, blinking rapidly, Aesc still laughing. 

“Are they all as extra-faithful as this?” Aesc enquired, patting the bust on its head and passing his hand down the very hawk-like nose. 

“I see no need to obfuscate the truth of people’s features. I’m no Thomas Lawrence, coddling and swaddling my sitters,” Jane declared, pacing the room as quickly as Sherlock had, the fire and lamplight making her eyes and neck jewels gleam. “If people cannot bear to see their likeness, well, they don’t have to look.” 

“But what happens when all of London, and other parts of England wish to look upon you, look upon a feature you’re…sensitive about?” Sherlock enquired, turning the plaster cast so the light fell upon it to cast a shadow. A distorted shadow, one with a markedly hooked proboscis. “Perhaps you’d rather people didn’t see. Take steps to ensure they didn’t.” 

“So that’s it?” burst from John. “Wellington isn’t running mad? Or trying to protect the reputation of… He just didn’t like how he looked? Huh!” He paused to accept a glass of wine from a servant, and to chink glasses with all present, toasting the engaged couple’s fortune. “I know His Grace fairly well,” he continued. “You’ve captured his essence. You must be very good an artist to grasp that and render it in a quick sketch following a brief encounter. Jane. Usually that would take a longer acquaintance, prolonged exposure to the subject, multiple meetings. To really get to know the person and experience…” He shut up at the fiery colour washing over Jane’s face and the volley of coughs and _harumphs_ from Lestrade. 

“Yes, seems Jane and Lady Musgrave have a lot in common,” Sherlock muttered, evidently recalling that the duke had been seen tiptoeing from the lady’s chamber in the early hours, and that the lady herself had said Wellington was in love with her. 

Sherlock’s aside had made Lestrade miss an exchange between the lovebirds, because the next thing he knew, they were both advancing to the table, whereupon they gave each other a short nod and stuck out their hands, to shove the bust violently to the floor. It…didn’t break. It chipped. A part. The detested part. 

“Well,” Aesc declared, retrieving the reshaped noseless _objet d’arte_ and resettling it on its plinth. “And that’s the end of it, the end to this saga. Hmmm?” 

His fiancée nodded, her colour once again as pale as the row of beads barely visible at her neck, returned, and accepted, as they all did, another drink. 

“Not quite,” Sherlock countered. Of course he did. “We still have to find the jewels.” 

“What _jewels_?” Jane enquired. “What is it that you’re looking for?” 

“The Dalrymple-Hamilton jewels,” John informed her. 

“Belonging to Lady Melisande Dalrymple-Hamilton?” Jane asked. “What has she gambled away this time? Oh, you didn’t know? She’s addicted to gambling and always having to use her jewels and personal effects as collateral. She loses heavily, you see, Well, she would. She gets drunker and drunker and plays more wildly as the evening goes on. She has no science, no method to her gaming! I told her… What? Why are you staring so?” 

“Jane.” Sherlock swallowed. “You said you had increased funds with which to administer your father’s holdings thanks to your ‘systems’. You also said you’d found ways to spend tedious evenings in society. We know sketching was one. I’m deducing the other is…gaming. Hence your oversensitive reaction to Aesc’s accusations.” 

He took her folded-arms stance as corroboration, and his lips quirked into a tilt. “I’m prepared to bet you enjoyed fleecing those witless society wives too. But that’s beside the point. I’m also deducing that you know where the pearl choker in question is.” 

“Oh for God’s sake, man!” Aesc threw in, glaring at Sherlock as Jane’s hand went to her throat. “How could you –” 

“I just hope you haven’t used them yet, miss, as your stake for this place,” Lestrade threw in, cutting off both Sherlock and Aesc. “What? isn’t it obvious Miss Turner won them?” He wouldn’t have been human if he hadn’t enjoyed the guppy faces his remark had put on the others. 

“Oh, _men_!” Jane almost yelled in scorn. She dropped her hands to her sides, curling them into fists. “None of you can see what’s in front of you! Isn’t it obvious I’m _wearing_ them? For heaven’s sake!” She lifted her hands to first expose the lustrous gleam of the choker of beads around her neck, then unclasp it. “I suppose you, Inspector Lestrade as a representative of the law, should take charge of them.” She dropped the still-warm jewellery into his hand. 

“Jane, why –” 

“I just liked then,” she answered Aesc, her voice small. “I don’t have many nice pieces. Fine – I’m weak and female and –” 

“Human and real and lovely and –” Aesc took over the litany. 

“And skilled enough to win them. They’re yours,” Sherlock interrupted, handing the string of pearls back to Jane. “They haven’t after all been reported as missing, despite John’s tall tale, and we don’t need them.” 

“Not even for leverage over Wellington, over Peel?” John asked. 

“Oh, I think having found and, erm, rectified the final plaster bust gives us all the hold we’ll need,” Sherlock reasoned, bending to brush the broken-off piece of the statuette into his handkerchief. He folded it carefully and tucked it away into his pocket. “I’ll go and inform him. Before he meets with Peel about the Metropolitan Police Act.” He caught Lestrade’s eye, and where triumph or glee might have been expected, there was a soft, pleased light. 

“Thank you.” Lestrade’s recognition wasn’t just for what Sherlock was about to do, but all he had done. All he was doing. He was trying. Lestrade knew that. Trying and…mostly succeeding. “Thank you, my love,” he repeated, softly, for Sherlock alone. 

“You’re not going anywhere just at present!” Aesc declared, draining his glass. “Well, you are – we all are, in fact!” He clasped Jane to him. “Because the lady I love has just agreed to be mine so we’re going celebrating! Let’s get up a party! We’ll send notes to everyone, to Piers, and Mrs Hudson, for starters, demanding they meet us for a very expensive and very drunken champagne supper!” 

“I think you’re half-intoxicated already,” Jane said. “ _Do_ be reasonable, dear.” But she was giggling. 

Giggling, the highbrow, learned Miss Turner? It truly was ‘the age of oddities’, as had often been observed. _Huh._ Lestrade laughed. There was no getting free of Byron, not in his life, not in Sherlock’s, and now, it appeared, not in their friends’. 

He laughed in turn and cleared his throat to quote: ‘Man, being reasonable, must get drunk; the best of life is but intoxication.”’'

He took a bow as the room erupted into cheers and applause, and accepted another drink, this poured by Sherlock. The intoxication, it seemed, started there.


End file.
